Apex Book Company

With a spade in one hand and a burlap sack in the other, the Limb Knitter dug for trench tubers in the Beaten Zone as the early morning rain gave way to a foggy Western dawn. Down on her belly in the mud between the Invaders to her South and Forces Velaysia to her North, she found the pickings pretty slim. She gave up poking at the mud for a moment and looked toward her lines.

Spring filled the lower elevations on the southern face of the Canarus Ranges, sowing the valleys and slopes behind the trenches in emerald foliage. From the gates of the mountain redoubts of Forces Velaysia, the Limb Knitter caught sight of the Brigades Invalid, on the march with their machines to stiffen the mere flesh and bone Frontists of the Brigades Defender along the Southern Front. Mixed in amid the rusty, black bipeds were the Invalid Harvesters, their bodies whitewashed to prevent friendly fire and their backs burdened with empty harvest drums.

No more trench tubers for a while, the Knitter told herself. Her two stomachs rumbled in agreement. She was sick of digging for the tasteless, decayed bits anyway.

The Knitter could see all of this through the morning fog, but her true prey, Frontist Delauchen Severis was only human. Shivering under his poncho, he could see no further than the insectile, maggot-blown corpses of crucified Invaders on the reserve slope of the trenches.

You look miserable, Delauchen, the Limb Knitter thought.

He was jittery too. The Limb Knitter’s prey jumped every time he heard her spade bite into the soil.

She watched him collect his weapon and begin the long crawl out of the Beaten Zone toward the forward trenches of the Southern Front. The Knitter put her spade away, still hungry, and crawled behind him, slow and steady.

Only when he was safe in the flooded trenches did he remove his rusty brain bucket and scratch madly at his greasy, matted hair. The Limb Knitter eased up to the trench with envy deep in her chest. She could just hear their conversation.

“Morning, grouch,” his conflict spouse, Thalia Vetraslev said. She gave him a peck on the lips. “See anything out there?”

“No,” he said, avoiding her eyes, as was his nature. “Not a damned thing. Just thought I heard some Knitters digging about.”

“I’ll get chow,” the Knitter heard Thalia say.

Delauchen started to snore while still on his feet.

Thalia thumped him in the shoulder. “Hey, did you hear me, Delauchen? I’m going for chow.”

He jerked awake, “Yes, sorry. I think I need sleep more than food.”

“You’ll want your tea,” she said. “I know how you are.”

It must be nice to have someone, the Knitter thought. She watched Thalia head eastward to join a line of male and female Frontists headed for the bombproof kitchens. Thalia was big-boned and had wide hips which formed her short, pear-shaped frame. When the Frontist waved back at Delauchen, it was possible to see the vanilla-scented ointment that covered the albino patches of skin on the right side of her face.

The Knitter’s Mark.

Delauchen waved back to Thalia and plopped himself down on a pinewood ammo box. Her peers avoided her and others with the same albino patches as if they might catch something. It was just a lack of melanin that caused the discoloration. The Master Knitter still hadn’t solved that problem. But it didn’t matter if they stayed away from the likes of her.

Thing is, Knitter’s Mark or not, Delauchen didn’t let anyone get too close to him either.

When he was sure she was out of sight, Delauchen reached for a tar canvas satchel and pulled out a worn spiral pad of rice paper. He settled into his spot, kicking loose a few rocks, which rolled down into a brackish shell hole.

Draw something beautiful, the Knitter thought, sliding forward a bit closer.

Here is why the Knitter waited all night: she enjoyed this part the most, the mornings when Delauchen would draw something. Maybe he would sketch a collection of empty ration canisters or barring that, he might do his dirty left hand again. Sometimes, as a joke, he liked to hold his thumb out and sketch that. And every so often, on good mornings when both were in high spirits, Thalia would let Delauchen sketch her face in the hopes that perhaps she could finally catch those evasive brown eyes of his.

The Limb Knitter eased up closer still, almost to the point where the top of her slouch hat was visible. But Delauchen didn’t pick up a charcoal stick or turn to a smooth, crème sheet of nude paper. Instead, he turned to an old sketch and stared at it.

No, she thought. Draw something. You don’t have much time. The rank, randy scent of the Invaders grew in the hours before an attack. It was enough to make the Knitter gag. Humans were spared due to their own limited senses, perhaps for the better, or maybe for the worse.

The Knitter moved closer, shifting loose a few bits of dirt and rock.

Charcoal rubbings and lines gave the woman in the sketch a pudgy nose. Dark curls brushed against her bare shoulders, pulled back to show off her ears. Sharp dimples flanked her close-lipped smile. Her eyebrows were feather-fine yet overemphasized above a pair of flat, almond-shaped eyes.

One look at those imperfect eyes was all it took for the sobs to come in shoulder racking bursts. If the other Frontists noticed his pain, they left him be, busied with the tasks of getting on in the trenches for another day.

The Knitter brought out a gold plated oval locket and opened it. Inside, Delauchen looked back at her from the small heliotype image. He appeared startled, frightened, but it was the only time he had ever made eye contact with her, through the heliotype maker.

The Knitter sighed. You never change, Delauchen.

The soil beneath her heavy frame shifted and dumped the Limb Knitter down into the puddle next to Delauchen’s boot.

Whoever threw something into the shell hole managed to do so in such a way that it splattered urine-fouled water all over Delauchen. A white haze fell over him when he saw his sketch of Yvette Mobori, preserved for two years since her death, was soaked with mud and feces from the shell hole. He threw the pad down and stood up, looking for the jackass that had thrown the rock into the puddle.

“Who did it this time?” The telltale smirk always gave someone away, or at least a cluster of Frontists, but there were only pale, fearful faces instead. Delauchen’s peers skittered, cowered and backed away, staring at something behind him.

Maybe I’ve finally beaten enough sense into them, he thought.

Water sloshed around in the shell hole behind Delauchen. He turned to see.

An overcoat patched in places with tar canvas and burlap rose from the muck, first to its knees, then one leg at a time, until it stood at a full two meters. It bent over to retrieve its slouch hat, floating on the surface, and replaced it upon its burlap-bag-covered head. Through two ragged holes, its yellow eyes watched Delauchen Severis with great care.

“Look at this!” Delauchen pointed at his ruined pad and forgot that he was supposed to be afraid of the Limb Knitter. “Do you know what you’ve done?”

The Limb Knitter held its jointed, ceramic hands out, palms up, cowering ever so slightly.

He retrieved the pad, stepped forward and held it up. When he did, he noticed a tarnished, gold-plated oval locket around the Knitter’s neck. It was still open and in it, he saw a heliotype of himself staring back.

Delauchen knew who it belonged to and she was supposed to be dead.

He pointed at the locket. “Where did you get that, you freak?”

The Knitter took another step back. It stumbled on something in the hole, almost falling back into the muck. Its robe quivered and rippled along the torso, which made the patched fabric flap back and forth.

He thrust the sketchpad at the Knitter. “You recognize her, don’t you? Where is she?”

The Knitter’s shoulders heaved and shook. It made a high pitched scraping sound akin to nails being dragged down a slate board in a lecture hall. Other Frontists scrambled into their bomb-proofs, not sure what would come next when the Knitter fell to its knees, wringing its hands. The ceramic fingers tinkled like a china tea set, the scraping sound grew louder and began to warble.

“Take a good look!” He threw his pad at the Knitter. It landed on the ground at the edge of the puddle. “Why don’t you answer me? Where is she?”

“Step back from that thing!” Out of breath, Thalia took Delauchen by the shoulders and made eye contact with him. “Look at me. No, at me, Delauchen. Sit down over there and take a deep breath. Okay?”

He nodded numbly, his anger spent, and did as he was told.

Thalia murmured words to the effect that the Limb Knitter had best leave and rejoined Delauchen on her own ammo crate. A whining sound in the background made it hard to hear her. She dropped the ruined sketch pad at Delauchen’s muddy brogans and sighed.

“I’m not sure,” she said, “but I think you made it cry.”

Microturbines heralded the arrival of a pair of Invalid machines, their two-meter tall bodies slid down into the trenches, bringing one of the crucified Invader’s corpses down with them. Thalia and Delauchen watched the machines watch them before they turned and made their way down the trench to the West. Silver buzzsaws on the whitewashed machine caught the sunlight with a flash before they rounded a turn in the trench and moved out of sight.

Delauchen pulled Thalia’s hand, her Knitter hand, to his lips and kissed the albino skin. She squeezed back, but her right wasn’t as strong as her left. He tried to look into Thalia’s eyes. It was hard, not because one was red and the other was blue. It was hard to open himself up, to get his head up and look at her, really look at her.

Once the whining turbines faded away, he let go of her hand.

Thalia kicked Delauchen’s foot. “Two years we’ve been together and you still keep things from me.”

“Sorry,” Delauchen said. He put the pad aside, out of Thalia’s sight. He hoped the sun would dry out the pages enough for him to salvage something.

“Why? I’ve got a fairly thick skin. I think I can face her.”

“She’s dead, Thalia.” He shrugged. Now that he had seen the locket, he wasn’t quite so sure. He remembered buying that locket at a sutler wagon for Yvette on their first visit to Kalentine Orchards on the northern slopes three years ago.

“I know that,” Thalia said.

“Then why worry about it?”

Thalia fixed him with a stare. “Because you still love her.”

He nudged a bit of mud next to his brogans; the heel was coming loose again. It was not an accusation, he realized, looking at his brogans. It was a fact.

“Can’t you say that about your last battle spouse?” Delauchen asked. “Don’t you get angry that the Knitters didn’t save him? It would be far better than ending up in one of those machines.”

She took him by the chin and held him up. “The Knitter saved me, Delauchen, not him. He was an ass anyway. Besides, one good thing came of it.”

“What?” he asked, still looking away.

“I met you.” She let go of him. “Is that a bad thing?”

“We’re going to get hit soon,” he said, trying to change the subject.

“Oh, come on. You don’t believe that crap, do you?” Thalia twisted the bottom of each ration can to start the heating process. “Imminent doom foreshadowed by the presence of a Knitter at Dawn and all that? Plenty of times I’ve seen them and nothing has happened.”

Delauchen kept his mouth shut. It wouldn’t do any good to say anything else. He could feel it happening in him. That moment when you had to shut yourself off and go cold to the world because someone was too close, too important.

He took a minute to consider Thalia, snapping a heliotype into his mind. Where the long-dead-and-gone Yvette Mobori had been olive in skin tone, Thalia Vetraslev was pale and red freckled. His lost lover had thick auburn curls where Thalia had short blonde hair, cropped close.

She smiled at him.

Smiles didn’t really mean anything; Delauchen had seen too many fake ones over the years. And when they started to mean something, as Thalia’s smile did at this instant, that was when he started to shove them away.

She’s too close, he realized. He didn’t want to hurt her like he had Yvette.

“You know, the Brigades Invalid might have–”

“Don’t,” Delauchen said. “Just, don’t. Okay?” He shook his head.

The Knitter’s locket bothered him.

She probably threw it away after we broke up and the Knitter found it, he decided.

Thalia looked away, unaware of what traipsed through Delauchen’s mind. She popped the top on a can of tea and handed it to her partner. “Here. Drink. You’re depressing me.”

He reached for the steaming can of tea and in so doing, made himself try, just one more time, to look her in the eye. She watched him watching her, breathing deeply, looking down into her when their eyes finally met. He held himself there in her mismatched red-blue eyes, the fear and panic pulling at his guts.

Don’t push her away, he told himself. Don’t quit just yet.

His woman blushed. “You’re such a grump. You’re lucky I love you, you know that?”

He nodded, hot can of tea in hand. He brought it up to his lips.

There was a flash of light.

“COVER!” someone shouted. “TAKE COV–!”

Lightning seared his eyes as a hot thunderclap slapped them down into the mud. He struggled to pump air back into his lungs, as he slid down into the shell hole. Rats streamed past him, but one stopped to nibble at something, a bit of rag, muscle and fresh bone.

Delauchen could see Thalia sprawled out not far from him, face down in the dirt. He tried to crawl toward her, but he couldn’t move.

There was another burst of light and something busted him in the face.

The darkness took him.

Delauchen opened his eyes to a grey murk. Someone was screaming loud enough to pierce the remnant ringing in his ears. A high-pitched mechanical whine obscured their screams until metal bit into flesh and the whine dropped into a low moaning grind. It drove the screams into the inhuman range.

Buzzsaws, Delauchen realized. Invalid Harvesters.

He blinked and turned his head. He could smell a metallic tang mingled with the stench of putrid rotten flesh close to his body. Sharp, burning jabs of pain pushed from his fingertips to his biceps in both arms before degrading into a duller incarnation that radiated through his shoulders and pushed deep into his neck before burrowing into his skull. Someone kneaded the flesh around his biceps as if it were bread dough.

He coughed and tried to clear his dry throat. He was thirsty.

“Hello?” he croaked.

“Do you require a Limb Knitter or do you wish to be inducted into the Brigades Invalid?” a toneless voice asked.

He coughed again. “What?”

“Knitter or Harvester.” The voice was insistent.

“Why… why can’t I see?”

“Frontist, your wounds are treatable but I need a decision. Do you want a Knitter or not?”

“Limb Knitter? But…” This was going to fast. “Wait, what about Thalia?”

“Frontist, I can’t spend any more time on you. Either accept the Knitter or I’ll send for a Harvester.”

Thalia would chose a Knitter, Delauchen told himself. She had done it once already.

“I’ll get a Harvester, Frontist.”

“No, no, a Knitter,” Delauchen shouted. “I’ll take the Limb Knitter.”

He couldn’t hear a response in the growing scream of microturbines and metal-shod feet stomping closer. The Invalid Harvester was coming. He’d be chopped up and dumped into one of those drums, then hauled off to wherever it was that you went to become an Invalid Warrior. A two-meter cybernetic zombie, the living electric death.

“I said I’ll take the Knitter!”

The screaming turbines and footsteps faded away along with the buzzsaws and screams. He heard a door slam shut muffling the sounds completely, leaving him with only the ringing in his ears. Delauchen thought he could hear heavy fabric falling to the floor but he wasn’t certain.

“I’m here, Delauchen,” a voice said. He could hear a rapid, frantic clicking sound. Something hairy took him into its arms. The stench of rotten flesh was overpowering. “I have always been here.”

Small points of cool, hard rods touched his ribs, wrapping themselves down and around to embrace his torso. Delauchen felt the rods tumbling him around; rolling him as hot, sticky glue-like string plopped onto his ankles. The substance began to wind itself around his shins, working up around his legs, pulling them tightly together. It sweated a blood-warm fluid that filled the dead spaces around his legs as the substance increased in speed, winding up to his torso. When it reached his lower ribs, the substance pulled itself taut. The fluid advanced behind the material, which caused Delauchen to break out into a cold, clammy sweat.

The rolling came to a stop.

Two of the coils, or rods, Delauchen wasn’t sure, touched his arms. They rubbed themselves back and forth, tugging at his skin.

Something bit him.

“Breathe, Delauchen,” the Knitter shouted over his screams. “Breathe.”

He strained at the bindings in a futile attempt to inflate his lungs. “I can’t.”

He felt the Limb Knitter’s hands grasp his head. Strands of filament oozed from its fingers, creeping their way across his skull. They pressed, shoved and rutted themselves into his ears, under his eyelids and down his nose. Delauchen tried to speak but found himself gagging on the advancing filaments that crawled through his sinuses and invaded his throat. The sharp-toothed coils in his stumps continued to rut, suck, pull and push into him.

“I’ll breathe for both of us,” it said, and kissed him full on the mouth. He felt himself pulled upright inside a powerful pair of legs locked behind the small of his back. The thing mounted him when the mouth pulled away, causing him to vomit. A warm, wet cloth cleaned the bile from his face.

“There will be a sharp pain, and then it will pass,” it said.

He heard a crack at the base of his skull, followed by something grinding against bone, penetrating deep into his brain.

The darkness came for Delauchen again.

Silver tones and dark shade permeated the Kalentine Orchards, not far from the Canarus Redoubt’s Northern Gate. Delauchen didn’t recall the walk on this visit, but he had been here before with Yvette. Their last weekend together had been during the Fall Harvest and they’d spent it camping out in the open and making love under the star-splashed skies.

His presence at the Orchards made him feel like an ass and it reminded him of why he hadn’t brought Thalia here, even though he was close to doing the same thing to her. Yvette had never suspected he was going to end it after that weekend.

Where is Thalia? He wouldn’t have come alone. It was too depressing.

Now in the springtime there were abundant blossoms on the oldest apple tree that swayed in the afternoon breeze. Two patched, careworn field blankets were spread out around the trunk of the tree, its bark rubbed bare from campers over the decades. Someone had sliced smoked cheddar, apples and some sausage on two tin mess plates. He remembered the galvanized bucket in his hands, heavy with iced-down bottles of hard cider. The Sutler wagon down the trail sold them from the Orchard presses to a Frontist for a modest discount.

He set the bucket down and took a slice of cheddar from the nearest tin plate. When he stood up Delauchen noticed a hapless Velaysian apple mite caught on a spider web. The spider moved swiftly, immobilizing the mite with a bite and winding it up for supper later.

I don’t remember planning this trip. Delauchen figured it must have been the cider, too much of it during the trip up, which might explain the sludge in his head. He slid the slice of cheddar into his mouth and sucked on it thoughtfully. Yvette and Delauchen had gorged themselves on hard-to-get delicacies when they were here last time. The smoky, creamy texture pulled up a painfully sharp and clear memory of the first of the final kisses he shared with Yvette.

He swallowed the bit of cheese. You’re a coward, Delauchen. You know that?

“Beautiful, aren’t they? The blossoms that is,” a woman said from behind, her voice young, fruity, melodic in tone. Familiar. “I’m glad we’re here to see them together.”

He froze.

Fingertips traced their way around Delauchen’s shoulder, sending chills down his spine. He held his breath as the woman’s hand circled around until she was face to face. Her auburn curls spilled down over her shoulders, lush and thick. Sharp dimples flanked her close mouthed smile.

Yvette? Delauchen started to breathe again, but didn’t trust himself to speak.

“I’ve found you.” Her smile brightened. “Took you long enough to get the cider.”

She drew Delauchen into her embrace. He found himself hugging her in return, his right hand located her shoulder blade, his left still holding the bucket. She nuzzled against his chest as his hand started to descend the solid, firm curve of her back. A hint of lavender in her curls caught his attention while his hands came to a wandering stop around her hips.

Fits like a glove, Delauchen thought, drawing her closer still.

“I’ve missed you,” he said.

Yvette drew back from him and took a long look. He tried to meet her eyes but his own gaze darted off to rest on sandals. Her toenails were painted with gold.

“Oh, I made you something. Sit down and fetch me a cider while I find it,” she said, turning to her Forces Velaysia issue canvas knapsack.

“Sure,” Delauchen said, and did as he was told. On all fours, Yvette rooted around in her knapsack. His eyes wandered to her butt and he found himself fascinated with the fact that he could stare at her rear end all day but not look her in the eye. Thalia’s was wider, bigger, softer, not the hard leanness of Yvette. He always had to bend at the knees to hug or kiss Thalia. She never really felt right in a physical sense.

He felt shallow and crass, embarrassed and repulsed at his thoughts.

Yvette handed him the paper-wrapped parcel from her knapsack. She plopped down next to him, blew an errant curl from her face and took the offered bottle of cider.

“Here it is,” she said, her face in full blush. “Knitted it myself.”

Delauchen squeezed the package, hefted it, then shook it. It was soft, light and noiseless.

“Open it, silly.”

He pulled at the twine to unwrap the paper. There was a bundle of knitted red yarn, folded nicely and neatly inside.

Delauchen smiled, turning the sweater back and forth to get a good look. “You made this?

“That’s what I said. Try it on.”

He rubbed his fingertips back and forth on the fabric. It wasn’t wool or cotton. It was sheer, warm, and he could swear it was throbbing.

A nervous chuckle got away from him. “Not exactly sweater weather.”

“Oh, humor me, babe.”

“Okay.”

He pulled the warm, sheer material over his head and shoved his arms out through the sleeves. The cuffs ended in the middle of Delauchen’s forearms. Waves of scalding hot pain washed back and forth across his hands and arms, sucking and pulling at his finger tips. He couldn’t move his arms at all. It hurt that badly.

“Oh, dear,” Yvette said.

“Burns,” Delauchen said.

“I know. Get your arms up,” Yvette said, reaching for him. “No, no, Delauchen, up over your head. You can be such a child, sometimes. Come on, I’ve got you.”

The pain passed once the sweater came off. He sat there, numb for a moment before cracking open a cider for himself and taking a long pull.

“I got you something else.” Yvette reached over and pulled a new rice paper sketchpad out of her knapsack along with some charcoals. “Why don’t you sketch something for me?”

“Like what?”

“Oh, something beautiful. There is plenty here to work with.”

He took the offered pad, opened it and ran his hands across the blank, creamy smooth sheets of paper.

“But…” he swallowed and tried to settle his feelings. “I didn’t bring you anything.”

She looked up from her pile of knitting tools and yarn.

“Delauchen, you’re so dense sometimes. Just seeing you is good enough. Okay?”

He nodded. “Okay.”

A couple of bottles of cider later, Delauchen noticed the fading light of the Eastern Sunset casting long shadows through the Orchard. He sat back against the apple tree, stretched the kinks out and considered his sketch in progress.

Like his previous efforts, many of Yvette’s best features were crafted with loving care, curls, dimples, smile and so forth. He used to spend hours in the trenches sketching her, usually on the day when it was her turn to clean the weapons. She always seemed angry, distant for some reason he could never quite fathom.

He started to work on her eyes.

This afternoon it had been different. Yvette knitted away on the sweater, a faint smile that grew when she’d catch him snatching glances at her. She didn’t seem angry now, and he couldn’t remember her ever knitting before.

“You’ve been awfully quiet,” he said.

She looked up, “I’m just enjoying the moment.”

“It’s nice this evening,” he said. He used his charcoal to draw a faint orb into the space where her left eye would go. “Clear skies. Warm.”

“Dry.” Yvette chuckled. “I like the fact that it is dry here.”

He nodded in agreement. “Dry is definitely good. I’ve seen enough mud to last me a lifetime.”

Happy as he was, he still couldn’t sort it out. Either Yvette was dead or she wasn’t. And where was Thalia? How had Yvette found them and managed to get furlough at the same time? He felt like he had been handed an algebra problem. If only he’d done better, he’d have been in the Brigades Artillery instead of another stupid Frontist in the trenches.

“It was cold the morning we went over the top,” Yvette said, her focus back on her knitting. “The blizzard, you couldn’t see your hand before your face.”

“I remember,” he said. The ill-fated Winter Offensive had happened a couple of months after they’d separated. Yvette had been moved to another part of their brigade and Delauchen was alone when the storm blew down out of the Northern Reaches. Suprema Strategic Velaysia felt it would mask their attack from the orbiting Invader, enabling them to take the entrenched enemy, supposedly hibernating, by surprise.

Not one of their better plans, he thought.

“My feet hurt so much from the cold, I wanted to cry,” he said.

“Some guys were pissing on their feet to warm them up,” Yvette said. “Only made it worse. A lot of them were inducted into the Brigades Invalid. Frost bite. I think some of them did it on purpose. I think I might have done it if I could.”

She fell silent and continued to knit.

“How…” He was afraid to spoil it, the moment. “How, rather, what happened? You didn’t come back.”

“You noticed?” Her knitting needles continued to clickety-click away with their one-two-one-two beat.

“Of course I noticed,” he snapped, angry more with himself than anything.

“But that is why you ended it, isn’t it? Afraid to let anyone get to close.” She met his eyes. “As if you are the only one that has suffered.”

Damn it, keep your head up, Delauchen, he chided himself. Yvette wasn’t his mother. She wouldn’t smack him for looking at her.

“I never said that,” Delauchen replied. That much was true.

“You didn’t have to.” She returned to her knitting. “I’m not stupid.”

“But you’re alive. Why didn’t you find me? Did you end up in another Brigade?”

She shook her head slowly.

“When I saw the Knitter with your locket this morning…” the answer kept slipping back into his muddy mind “…I knew you were still alive.”

Yvette nodded; her knitting needles continued clicking along.

“I figured you threw the locket away,” he said. “I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”

“I didn’t throw it away.”

Delauchen was confused. “But… the Knitter had it. I saw it.”

Yvette reached under her blouse and produced a locket, the same heliotype locket he had given her years ago. The same locket the Knitter had worn. “Delauchen, listen very carefully.”

He looked up.

“I–Still–Have–It,” she said. “Do you understand?”

He shook his head. “No, Yvette, I don’t. Nothing makes any sense.”

The only way it would make sense is if Yvette Mobori and the Knitter he’d seen that morning were the same person.

And that just wasn’t possible.

“May I see it?” She nodded at his sketchpad. “You seem more interested in your sketch than me anyway.”

“What?” He looked down, embarrassed with himself. “Yeah, sure.”

Yvette set her knitting aside and took the offered sketchpad. She was silent for a long time, her fingers tracing the charcoal features of her face on the pad. Delauchen imagined he could hear the skin of her fingertips sighing across the paper.

A tear fell onto the pad. She sniffed and looked up, her shoulders rising and falling with each tortured breath.

She sniffed a second time. “I’ve done it again.”

The realization started to sink in. Delauchen waited for her to stop crying before opening his mouth.

“We’re not at Kalentine Orchards, are we?” he asked, easing the tear-stained sketch pad out of her hands.

“Depends on your perspective and philosophy about such things, but physically there right now?” she shook her head, her curls swaying back and forth across her face. “No, Delauchen. We’re not at Kalentine. In fact, we’re not too far away from the Southern Front, in physical terms.”

“So, you’re the Limb Knitter?” he asked, feeling incredibly stupid. He still didn’t want to buy it. “Two meters tall and smells like a month-old corpse? Forgive me, Yvette, but you don’t look like any Knitter I’ve ever seen. You certainly don’t smell like it.”

“She,” Yvette corrected, “Is not an It and she is sitting here in front of you. What is the last thing you remember?”

“Thalia and I were talking about…” He shook his head. “She said something about my making the Knitter cry.”

“Do you remember getting hit?” Yvette asked. “I do because I was there. It was a downward fragmentation air burst. You lost both arms, had shrapnel in most of your body. You also took a pretty good chunk of dirt in the face which busted your retinas. Those are going to be the hardest to fix.”

“A nightmare, Delauchen said. “I think it was a nightmare.”

“About?”

“Something bit me, wound me up in some sticky goo.” He looked at the spider, now consuming her apple mite on the web. “Spiders. I think it was about spiders.”

She held up the sweater, exasperated or disappointed, Delauchen wasn’t sure. “Here, may as well try it on now.”

Delauchen wasn’t quite so sure after the last painful attempt. He looked it over. “Is this going to hurt?”

“Not if I got the sleeves right,” Yvette said. “Arms are pretty tricky, especially the hands. Your brain remembers how long they were, even if they aren’t there any more.”

He took hold of the sheer, warm red sweater, rubbing it between his fingers.

“What happens if this fits?” he asked.

This time Yvette looked away.

“Well?”

She picked at a bit of cheese, avoiding him. “You’ll go back to the Front.”

“And what about you?”

She shrugged. “What does it matter?”

“Do you have someone?”

“Are you kidding me?” she asked.

She never liked being alone, he remembered. “It must be difficult.”

“It hurts, plain and simple, Delauchen. Try on the sweater, will you.”

“What if I stay?”

She looked up, “What about Thalia? You going to abandon her for me, are you?”

Shit, he thought, angry with himself for forgetting about Thalia. “Is she okay?”

“Try it on and I’ll tell you.”

Delauchen took a deep breath, clenched his teeth and pulled the sweater on. His hands eased through the sleeves. He paused to gather his courage at the edge of the cuffs before he shoved his fingers through.

He stretched and flexed. A perfect fit. Yvette looked satisfied with herself.

“Well?” he asked.

Yvette looked off down the road of apple trees. “I saw a Harvester come for her.”

What the hell am I going to do now? “A Harvester? Why didn’t you save her?”

“Because you were there, asshole! You were bleeding to death. I had to kick the rats off of you and drag your ass out of one superbitch of an artillery barrage,” Yvette said. “What else was I supposed to do? For some reason I can’t fathom, I still love you.”

“So, the Brigades Invalid have her,” he said.

“Did another two years in the trenches make you deaf? Yes, probably. Damn, you are so bloody dense,” she said, exasperated with him. “You never change.”

“How will I ever get back to her?”

Yvette grabbed Delauchen, pulled him to her and kissed him hard. He fought it for a moment but she turned out to be surprisingly strong, more so than he remembered. Delauchen found he didn’t really want to pull away in any case.

When they finally parted, he felt his knees buckle.

“I’ll finish up now,” she said quietly, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “You won’t remember a thing.”

“Yvette, don’t.”

“It’ll be better this way. You can find someone else,” she said, disappointment etched on her face.

She’s not my mother, he told himself. She won’t hurt me.

“Yvette.” Delauchen steadied himself, took a deep breath and met her gaze. Yvette’s wet and heavy eyes grabbed hold and wouldn’t let go. He held himself there with the woman who had come back for him. She shook her head and looked away when the moment lasted longer than she had anticipated.

“I love you,” he said. “Is there a way?”

The horizon was dark now with the first of three moons climbing into the sky. Her face was carved out of reality with soft blue light. She faced him.

“Yes, there is.”

After a moment of pondering, he made up his mind. “Anything. Whatever it takes.”

Yvette let out her breath and nodded. “All right.”

Yvette disentangled herself from Delauchen’s egg and laid him down in the warm mud near her chamber. She took her time covering the egg, slathering the mud around the brown, leathery surface before easing him down into the bubbling depths. Once she was done, she stood under a warm stream of mineral water and cleaned the aftermath from her heavily modified form. Only then did she dress and go for something to eat.

In the next chamber, the buzzsaws had come to a stop. Mud and blood splattered, the lone Invalid Harvester rinsed its blades free of chunked flesh and muscle, chipped bone and clotted blood. It was silent except for the sound of running water ringing off the silver blades to dribble on the stone floor. Six black drums, harvest pods, each with the molting snake sigil of the Brigades Invalid, filled the corner of the chamber. Four more drums, those of Invalid Inductees, were already strapped to its back.

Yvette nodded to the silent cyborg.

“There should be enough scrap to hold you and your Initiate for the next couple of days,” the Harvester said, its voice a mash of metallic echoes and vibrations. “The current engagement continues unabated, thus, there will be more tomorrow.”

“And the one I mentioned? Were you able to induct her?”

The Harvester reached into a drum and pulled an albino-skinned right arm from the collection of limbs and flesh. The trunk, brain and vitals were in the Inductee drums on its back. New guts for the Brigades Invalid. The Knitter never got those, not that she wanted them.

“Sometimes it is best to take them with minor wounds, but she did not have any at all,” the Harvester said. It gave the limb to Yvette for her inspection. “No matter. She will be of more use to us.”

With a snap, a finger came off and Yvette chewed on it thoughtfully.

“Does this arrangement meet your satisfaction?” the Harvester asked.

She spat the finger bones out, noting the odd aftertaste that Knitter crafted meat had in contrast to regular human meat. She had long since gotten over her issues with how the Limb Knitters fed themselves.

“Yes,” Yvette said, satisfied that her lonely days were at an end. “I believe it does.”

THE END

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Steven Francis Murphy is a reluctant resident of Kansas City, Missouri. A veteran of Operation Desert Storm, he took advantage of his Army College Fund to pay most of his way through a Bachelor of Arts in History. He topped that endeavor by going into debt for his Master of Arts in European History with a specialization in Gender Studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. These days he is freed from his cage in an undisclosed location for the purpose of teaching history; and ever so often, he gets to write science fiction. The nominal compensation is fifty-five gallon drums of black tea.

 
 

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