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Gideon pulled a thorn from his ass and sat down heavily beside Kremy, who passed him a couple eggs.
‘Whip those up for me would you, Gid?’
He was given a bowl and a fork; he set to work. These'd be the most well-whisked eggs Kremy would ever see, Gideon would make sure of it. Anything to repay the mercy of giving his restless hands something to do.
A stunned quiet crept over the group as Kremy set about clattering with his weights and his pans, and Gideon sure as hell wasn’t gonna be the one to break it. Gricko was clinging to Hootsie like she might up and vanish at any moment, Frost was frowning down at his hands and Torbek was still crying a little, though he was trying to be quiet about it. Setting the bowl in his lap, Gideon whisked with one hand, feeling absentmindedly for the rope binding Twigsy to his back with the other. It was secure.
‘What, we at a funeral or somethin’, fellas?’ Kremy said, measuring out cups of flour. His voice was brittle, too bright. Gideon could tell he'd been hard hit— could read it in the slight tremor of his hands, the hunch of his shoulders. Hell, he’d died first hadn’t he? Who knew how much worse it had gotten after that.
Frost gave Kremy a flat look, but Torbek spoke up first, voice wobbly. ‘Mr. Kremy?’
‘Yes, Torbek?’
He fiddled with a briar, poking a thorn with his nail as though to work out which was sharper (Gideon wasn’t likely to take that bet). The bugbear hunched over, folding himself deceptively small to protect his middle.‘C-can Torbek have blueberries in his waffle?’
Torbek sniffled pitifully and Kremy relaxed a little beside Gideon, who hadn’t even noticed he’d tensed up. ‘Sure thing. Anyone else got any requests?’
‘Yaaaay, thank you, Mr. Kremy, Torbek loves blueberries!’ Kremy produced them from the bag. ‘Woahhh, Torbek has never seen blueberries that aren’t all squishy and fluffy! Those look delicious…’
Kremy slapped his hand away. ‘Now, now, wait until they’re ready, Torbek.’
‘Oh! Can Hootsie and I have bananyas on ours? And one of them eggs fried up all crispy-like!’
Frost had settled into a meditative criss-cross, but at this he reopened his eyes and frowned at Gricko. ‘Bananas and a fried egg? That’s preposterous, Gricko. Next you’ll be asking for green eggs and ham.’
‘You’re the cat, Frosty! Besides, that does sound pretty good…’
‘I don’t even know what that means. Anyway. Everyone knows waffles are best with…’
They fell to bickering. Gideon passed the excellently whisked eggs to Kremy (if he did say so himself) and leaned back on his hands, tipping his head to stare back up at the canopy. The trees were just like they had been, there… in that dream, or nightmare, or whatever it was. Tall and covered with moss, with thin spiky branches that grew thick and leafy much higher up. It was easier when it wasn’t so silent; when they could laugh and argue like nothing had gone horribly wrong.
‘Any requests, Gid?’ Kremy murmured, mixing the milk into the eggs.
Gideon looked over at him and suddenly waffles were the last thing on his mind. He dropped his voice low so that only Kremy could hear him. ‘You know it’ll be different next time, right, Kremy?’
Kremy looked up from the batter he was pouring onto the cast iron, where it began sizzling. His mouth was pulled into a frown, his eyes sharp. ‘What’dya mean?’
Gideon fiddled with a rose, picking at its petals until they began to mulch between his fingers. ‘Well, come on. You all died back there ‘cause I couldn’t protect you. I’ll get stronger. I’ll—’
‘Everyone died back there because we were up against the fuckin’ Jabberwock, Gid!’ Kremy exploded. The background conversation cut off as four sets of eyes snapped to them. Kremy stopped, mouth opening and closing. Gideon realised that he had been mistaken; Kremy wasn’t scared, he was angry. Livid, actually. It gave Gideon heart. Smoke could have been billowing from his nostrils, but that was only the burning of the forgotten waffle. ‘Damn right you’ll get stronger,’ he hissed. He cast a venomous glance over the rest of the crew, who fell to pretending that they weren’t avidly eavesdropping. ‘We all gotta, if we even got a hope of seein’ home again.’
‘That’s right, man,’ Gideon said, leaning back on his elbows, reassured as ever by the fire of Kremy’s determination.
‘Torbek calls dibs!’
Everyone (except Frost) startled as Torbek lunged forward disturbingly quick, reaching out with his spindly claws to snatch the burnt, half-cooked waffle from the pan before Kremy could stop him. He flapped it feebly in the air in a pathetic attempt to cool it down before shrugging and chomping it whole. Gideon snickered as a bellow rang out and Torbek tried to chew and blow air on his scalded tongue at the same time.
‘Don’t eat burnt food, Torbek, it’s bad for you,’ Kremy snapped, ladling more batter into the pan.
‘It’sh betterh than gharbagheeee,’ Torbek garbled, still frantically chewing. ‘Beshisesh, Torbekh ish pretty shure Torbekh is himmuuune to food poishoningh by nowhgh.’
‘Yeah, you’ve got bigger things to worry about, that’s for sure,’ Gideon muttered under his breath, earning a Look from Kremy.
‘And din’t your mother ever teach you to keep your mouth shut when you eat?’
‘Nohgh. Canh I have theh bluehberriehs nowhs?’
‘Uncle Glorbo always says that you should chew one hundred times before you swallow! Isn’t that right, Hootsie?’ Gricko’s head emerged on the other side of the owlbear, like a green tick buried in her feathery fur.
‘Well, uncle Glorbo ain’t chewin’ on nothin’ but dirt these days and so will we if we don’t work out what the fuck we’re gonna do.’
Gricko shot Kremy a wounded look and disappeared again. Gideon shifted uneasily.
‘You seem agitated, Kremy,’ said Frost, opening his eyes. His expression was blank, though his eyes had grown stormy again. ‘I know it has been a… trying time, but we cannot afford to start turning on each other. Some compassion would not go amiss.’
‘Agitated? Yeah, I’m fuckin’ agitated, Frost. We all just got minced into dog meat back there, in case you’ve forgotten. You’ll forgive me if compassion is just about the last thing on my fuckin’ mind.’ Kremy flipped the waffle angrily, sending spats of batter flying into the grass.
‘Let him be, Frosty,’ Gideon grumbled, shifting where he sat.
Frost gave Gideon a look he couldn’t understand, though it made his flames subside a little.
‘I doubt I will ever be able to forget, Kremy. I was the last one standing, so to speak. I witnessed it all. It is precisely for this reason that I think now of compassion.’ He looked over to Torbek and Hootsie and Gricko, somewhere beyond, and the look in his eyes made Gideon’s chest ache. ‘You are my friends. My family. As… horrifying… as it was to be the last one left, somehow I find myself glad that it was me. It is not a circumstance that I would wish upon any of you.’
Gideon found himself nodding, following Frost’s strange logic. But Kremy’s shoulders stiffened.
‘I need some air,’ he said, voice dull and distant. Gideon frowned.
‘But we’re outsi—’
‘Y’all can make your own breakfast,’ he snapped, clambering jerkily to his feet and stalking away.
‘Don’t go out of earshot,’ called Frost to his receding back.
♦
‘Man, you must be really messed up to let them—’
‘Do you remember that old tune?’
Kremy’s voice came as though from far away, though Gideon stopped right beside him. He hadn’t got far, just to the next clearing over, and it had taken Gideon but a moment to catch up. Even now he could hear the sounds of Gricko and Torbek arguing enthusiastically over the exact science of waffle-making, with the dull tones of Frost’s supervisory disapproval cutting through the chaos.
Kremy’s eyes were fixed on the trees, though Gideon knew he wasn’t seeing the same forest any more.
‘Jack o’ Diamonds, Jack o’ Diamonds, is a hard card to play,’ Kremy sang under his breath.
‘Sure, I remember,’ Gideon said. ‘Heard it damn well often enough in every shady corner of Augway, back in the day.’
‘All this talk about kings and pawns… I never did have much patience for chess.’
Gideon saw that strangled in Kremy’s fist was the little red pawn. ‘The Jack’s more our kinda guy, ain’t he.’
‘I heard someone spin it different, once, when I was a boy,’ Kremy said lowly, staring at his clenched hand. Gideon watched him intently. ‘She sang it real low, jazzy-like. It’s strange. I only ever heard it the once, but I remember it clear as anything.’
‘What’d she sing, Kremy?’
Gideon watched Kremy’s lip curl, something sad, something loathsome coming over him. When he sang, he sang with the voice of a town that lived now, for them, only in the past.
‘Jack o’ Diamonds, Jack o’ Diamonds,
You brought me misery
Jack o’ Diamonds, Jack o’ Diamonds,
You stole my love from me.
I lost my heart to a gambler
River Boat Dave was his name
And he played from dawn ‘til sun down
Jack o’ Diamonds was his game.’
Gideon agreed with Kremy; kings and hags and ancient, stupidly allegorgical wars were all a little above his pay-grade. But this… this he knew. So, staring at the lost, lonesome expression of his friend, Gideon settled in to listen.
♦
He swilled blood behind his teeth and spat, grunting as his fist connected again and again, cutting his knuckles on splintered bone. Rage simmered close beneath his skin, like someone was breathing down his neck from the inside. His knuckles ached and he knew he was grinning like a madman, could see it in the whites of Mr Jacobo’s eyes.
'Thank you, Gideon, that’s plenty, now.’
He stepped back, straightening, falling into place behind Mr. Kremy. He let his rage settle back within him, a wild thing on a leash, safe knowing that as soon as the word was said…
It felt good to have mastery over some part of himself, after so long with little more than a name to call his own.
The skinny conman leaned casually against the desk, long legs crossed before him, picking his fingernails like he hadn’t a care in the world. Jacobo stared up at him with blood in his eyes.
‘You do understand, sir,’ said Mr. Kremy, ‘it ain’t nothin’ personal. Only, I’m just a young grifter tryin’ to get my foot on the ladder, you see? Don’t you know how damagin’ to my sweet, fragile reputation it would be if rumours started goin’ round that I had sticky fingers?’ He tsked and shook his head, playing his part mightily. ‘ We can’t have that, now. Thankfully, you’ve been so agreeable that ain’t nobody ever gonna make such baseless accusations again. Right, sir?’
Jacobo nodded wildly, eyes rolling in his head, and Mr. Kremy seemed satisfied.
They left him there. The stars were dimming overhead as they ducked out into the alley and set off, keeping to the darkest parts of shade so that no one else haunting the streets would see Gideon black with blood and have any pointed questions.
‘What’d you make of ol’ Jacobo, Gideon?’ asked Mr. Kremy as they passed over the railway tracks.
‘I made out he was pretty motherfuckin’ dumb to let two nobodys like us school him like that.’
Mr. Kremy’s grin flashed like a knife in the starlight. ‘You still got that Ace up your sleeve?’
‘Damn right, Mr. Kremy.’ And two pockets a damn sight heavier than they ought to have been.
‘We should keep it. For when we ain’t nobodys no more. So that when the whole of Augway fears our name an’ owes us their debts an’ licks our boots jus’ to make ‘em shine, we got somethin’ to keep ourselves humble.’
Gideon laughed, imagining such a life. It seemed like a far off dream but one that was now, somehow, within his grasp.
‘I like the sound of that, Mr. Kremy.’
‘And, Gid? Leave the ‘Misters’ for the boot-lickers. Call me Kremy.’
♦
Kremy told Gideon the whole sorry tale. Sang it to him soft, like the old days when they’d had no way to pass a dull evening but by trading old songs and jokes and stories back and forth, preferably over a bottle of rye. Gid hadn’t known many but Kremy could hardly blame him. So he’d given him all he could, all the old jaunts and tales and tunes he could recall— the songs of the swamp that had as much the percussion of crawdads and the harmony of cicadas as they did any actual music.
They were sweet, those days, and sweeter in memory than they ever had been in life. Would they one day look back on these days and see them as golden? Kremy somehow doubted it.
Kremy sang Gideon the tale of a man who was double— precise and clean, quick and stealing. Whose fingers moved faster than lightning, hovering always over the hilt of his gun. Who won every penny he’d ever had right from under everyone’s noses, only to be betrayed at the last by the one he’d thought to trust: the Jack o’ Diamonds, fallen from out of his sleeve.
He was out of practice, besides having no real singing voice in the first place. But still Kremy sang.
‘They shot him, they shot him
They killed my lovin’ Dave
An’ they nailed the Jack o’ Diamonds
On his lonely grave.
Jack o’ Diamonds, Jack o’ Diamonds,
You brought me misery
Jack o’ Diamonds, Jack o’ Diamonds,
You stole my love from me.’
And Kremy found that in the wretched silence, there was, and always had been, memory—
♦
The hot star of Gideon’s palm, searing his cool chest— pushing, pulling, swaying, maybe, just in place;
Collapsing like a bower of twigs, home for nothing any longer;
Lips searing against Kremy’s neck, tasting his pulse like he listened best with his mouth;
But to fall first among men is to fall alone;
To remember what had been lost and what had been gained, in being never far;
Like a spell— one name never spoke without the other, never a shadow without source, (was there a life before this?);
Before the weight of his hands, his chest, above, pressing down, his hips, his slow and heavy kisses;
Dull, stolen flesh, robbed of fire which is life, and had anyone ever seemed as dead as he had seemed then?;
Stolen, taken in, absorbed, lost, gained, lost, unreachable, in still-warm skin;—
♦
Kremy’s song faded away and Gideon watched him stare at the green earth, eyes a little maddened. Wordlessly, he sank to sit on a massive fallen log, cushioned by a carpet of moss. A beat of silence passed.
Gideon crossed his arms. ‘Seems to me like he shoulda learned how to cheat properly, if he wanted to see his girl again.’
Kremy jolted and his eyes flashed as he stared at Gideon, giving the unnerving impression that it was suddenly the dead of night. ‘And don’t you think the Jack had a mind of its own? That it was gonna be content to let him walk away with the gold?’
‘It got nailed down with him in the end. What’s it got to gain?’
Kremy’s eyes grew shadowed. ‘Who’s to know?’
Gideon forced a chuckle. ‘It’s just a card like all the rest, man. Poor bastard had a bad day. Anyone ever tell you you’re too damn superstitious?’
‘You still don’t get it, do you, Gid?’
‘Get what?’
Kremy’s gaze wandered away. It took him a long while to respond. Gideon wanted to touch him, soothe the frown from his brow, but kept his hands to himself. Kremy had something to say, and he damn well better say it. But he sank down by his side nonetheless.
‘I’m tied up, Gid. Jacks, pawns, knights…’
‘Knights?’
Kremy gave him a bleak look. ‘I’m just about tied into my own damn lonely grave.’
Gideon’s head fell back. ‘Come on, man. We’ve had this conversation like one million times.’
‘For all the difference it’s made!’
‘Alright, fine! What do you want me to tell you, Kremy? We got Garue and the Baron on our asses, but that ain’t nothin’ new. Yeah, that shit you said about the swamp and the eternal damnation and the mindless zombie thing was kinda spooky, but we’ll make good—’
‘It’s not fuckin’ Garue, Gid, it’s me!’ Kremy snapped, voice rising.
Heat flared on Gideon’s face as his hair and beard simmered. He shook his head, confused.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Forget it.’
Gideon leaned forwards, frowning. Kremy looked up at him, the whites of his eyes luminous. ‘No. Explain it to me.’
‘This ain’t somethin’ you can reverse-engineer, Gid,’ Kremy muttered.
‘There ain’t nothin’ I can’t reverse-engineer, thankin’ you kindly. Your cryptic bullshit ain’t gonna be the first.’
Kremy hung his head.
A sting of hurt crept into the silence as Gideon replayed the song in his head. ‘You sayin’ you’re the Jack in your own sleeve? That don’t make no sense, man. Besides…what, you think you’ll betray us? You think…’
Kremy’s hand shot out and gripped Gideon’s arm so tightly his claws nearly rent the flesh. All his anger from earlier was gone, and Gideon realised that he had been mistaken twice. He looked into Kremy’s grey-gold eyes and saw that anger really was just fear set on fire.
‘No. No, let me speak. I’m sayin’ that I’ve damn well cursed us all and that’s just a fact. I’m the Jack, I’m the dead man, and I’m the lovelorn girl, Gid.’
Gideon frowned, hard. ‘But you didn’t have anythin’ to do with the Jabberwock.’
Kremy narrowed his eyes. ‘Who said anythin’ about the Jabberwock?’
Gideon scoffed. ‘I might be dumb as swampwater but I ain’t blind, man. You’ve been freaking out ever since we woke up an’ I don’t blame you. Sure, you’re our leader, Kremy, but you heard us all at that Neckbaths temple, talkin’ about our ‘free will’. A gambler might lose it all, even his life if he ain’t quick enough, but he’s the one chose to sit down in the first place. He din’t have to.’
Kremy lessened his desperate grip. Gideon could feel a sliver of blood trickle down the back of his arm, where a claw had pierced a little too harshly. ‘You think we were always at the table for fun, back in the day? Sometimes it ain’t a choice, Gid. You should know better than anyone how desperation can turn certain evils into necessity.’
‘I went where you went, Kremy,’ Gideon murmured. ‘It weren’t no evil to me.’
‘But that’s exactly what I’m sayin’,’ Kremy moaned, turning away, clutching his face in his hands.
‘So what, you want us all to fuck off, then? Tough shit, man. It’s too damn late for that. We’ve cast in our lot and now all we got to do is play the best game of our lives. We’ve done it before. Remember ol’ Mr. Jacobo?’
Kremy’s shoulders hunched. Gideon wished he’d turn. It was always so much harder to talk to Kremy when you couldn’t see his eyes.
‘We can’t do to the Jabberwock, or Bavlorna, or the good Baron, what we did to Jacobo, Gid.’
‘Why not? Hell, we were basically just kids back then and we’re so much stronger now—’
‘For Chrissakes, Gid! You wanna go try and punch in the Jabberwock’s teeth again, be my damn guest! Just don’t expect me to come weepin’ by your fuckin’ grave. We ain’t stronger, we’re just older. And no wiser for it either.’
Gideon subsided, cracking his knuckles moodily. The world would be so much better if everything could be solved with a good, solid punch to the face.
‘You think it’s like with the hourglass?’ Gideon said suddenly, striking on a thought that made his pulse quicken. ‘All this talk of Augway, that old song… I dunno. Memories seem more real in this place, don’t they? Like with the swamp out in the desert… and now bein’ in the woods again, just like the ones we fought that thing in… what’s present, past, or future here? It’s all the same sand, ain’t it?’
Kremy was staring at him, eyes wide.
‘What?’ Gideon said after a moment, heat rising into his cheeks.
Kremy shook his head slightly. ‘When’d you become the wise one?’
Gideon grinned at him. ‘I guess dyin’ really does change a man.’
‘Past, present, future… they’re all one and the same, ain’t they, Gid? The sand just passes to different places. Our sorry pasts are our sorry futures.’
Gideon’s face fell. ‘That’s not what I—’
‘That’s just the nature of a deal.’ Kremy ran his fingertips over the moss coating the fallen log they were perched on. His eyes had strayed again to somewhere far, far away. A weird silence stretched again between them, and it made Gideon’s skin crawl.
‘I can still hear it, you know. That thing steppin’ on you,’ he said, so low that Gideon had to lean close to catch it. ‘Broke every bone in your body, I’d wager.’
Gideon swallowed thickly, fingers tightening on the soft, rotten bark.
‘You looked so damn small, Gid. You looked like the boy I found in that alley, way back when. And I just knew— in my bones, I just knew— you were gone.’
It seems they’d both been thinking about those old days. It was the first gift Kremy had given him— the will to look fondly upon his memories, and keep them like the treasures they were. A hard gift to bear, at times.
Gideon closed his arms around the slim shoulders and pulled Kremy into a crushing embrace, clinging to him like a flame to a log. He felt claws dig into his shoulder blades as Kremy gripped him fiercely back, and found the pain both deeply grounding and wildly disorientating.
What could he say? That it wasn’t real, just a memory? But it had been real. And who knew better than them just how real memories could be?
‘’M here, Kremy,’ Gideon murmured, tilting their heads back to slot their lips together as proof. Kremy kissed him back desperately, claws digging into Gideon’s shoulders in a way that drove him wild. Gideon’s hand slid up Kremy’s thigh, coming to rest just shy of his hips. He squeezed, trying to convey all that he didn’t have the words for— to sear it into Kremy’s skin, his very insides, so that he’d never forget.
Kremy broke off harshly, breaths coming ragged. ‘You stepped between me and that thing, Gid, with nothin’ but your bare hands.’
Gideon furrowed his brow, lips brushing Kremy’s jawline. ‘Well, yeah. The Vorpal Blade was cool and all but… ain’t ever really been my style, you know?’
‘I know. Kiss me again.’
Gideon did as he was told, kissed him thoroughly until Kremy’s fingers tightened in his hair, pulling him off.
‘Gid, Gid… you fought for us all, but you died— you died for me.’
Heat erupted throughout Gideon, scattering a burst of wavering light throughout the clearing as hair and beard went wild. He panted, leaning slightly back, unsure whether he wanted to argue or fall to his knees.
‘That’s right,’ he breathed.
‘Don’t look so damn proud of yourself,’ Kremy hissed.
Gideon snapped back to reality. ‘But… ain’t that always been the plan? My life… it’s yours, man. And not because I owe you, or anythin’.’ He lowered his voice and looked away, beard flickering. ‘I’m your man, Kremy. Through and through.’
Kremy’s hands tightened painfully against him and he buried his face against Gideon’s shoulder. ‘It was never supposed to get this bad, Gid.’
‘Bad?’
‘Tied up, an’ no mistake. My man…’
The trees stood tall and forbidding around them, like a wall they could never climb. From somewhere a world away came a cheer— it seemed like Hootsie had managed to flip a waffle. Gideon muffled his smile against the side of Kremy’s head. The sickening immediacy of his agony— the feeling of bones fracturing, skin pulling and tearing, life fleeing in hot, red rivers— was beginning to fade. After all, he’d gone down before, hadn’t he? Was it really so different than all those other times, at the end?
Gideon thought back to the clearing, to Frost’s words.
And as though he’d read his mind, Kremy spoke, his words slightly muffled by the soft material of Gideon’s shirt. ‘I don’t understand Frost.’
Gideon huffed a laugh, curling an arm around Kremy’s back. ‘Who the hell does?’
‘He said he was glad he was the last one standin’. I always thought I felt the same. I’ll be the first to admit I’m a cold-blooded bastard, Gid, and you’d be the second, I’m sure. We could come through just about anythin’ together, no matter who we lost along the way, right? That’s just the way it’s always been. But when I saw you go down… the good Baron himself couldn’t have saved me. I was the next to go, right beside you. And that was right. I only wish it’d been me first. How strange's that?’
Gideon’s flames grew low, pensive. They curled blue and dark around his jaw, reflecting dully on Kremy’s skin. ‘I’m glad it wasn’t. If dyin’s somethin’ I can do for you…’
‘And a whole damn lot of good it did,’ Kremy said, though there was no real heat behind it. He just seemed sad, and Gideon didn’t know how to make it better. ‘You do more than that, Gid. What the hell I did to deserve it, I’ll never know.’
‘You always said that only fools get what they deserve.’
‘I hate bein’ right.’
Gideon chuckled softly. ‘Sure. An’ I hate bein’ the tall, handsome one with all the muscles.’
‘Gid…’ Kremy’s voice softened, saddened. His hands curled against Gideon’s back. ‘Either you’re the most selfless man I ever met or I’m the most selfish bastard alive.’
‘Key word bein’ alive. I ain’t smart like you and Frost, or carin’ like Gricko, but I’d say in terms of selfishness, we balance each other out,’ Gideon murmured through a crooked smile, soothing a palm over Kremy’s shoulder blades. ‘I just said it, didn’t I? I’m the tall, handsome one with all the muscles. What else am I supposed to do?’
Gideon knew Kremy was too worked up to take the easy way out— to turn it into something witty and dumb all at once and spin the conversation away from darker waters— but it still made his heart sink to feel him tense.
‘I don’t know,’ breathed Kremy, wretchedly. ‘I don’t know but I don’t know if I can bear it, either. Suddenly, I can see a future I’ve never seen before, Gid. One that scares me more than any swampy purgatory the Baron’s got in store. At least if we fail, we’ll fail together. But— to succeed, alone… to be the last one standin’… it’s unthinkable…’
‘Then don’t think it! Snap out of it, man! We do it together, like always. Anythin’ else come up, we’ll burn those bridges when and if we get to ‘em. Augway’s waitin’ for us… maybe we’ll start another carnival, like Frosty said. Get rich and lose it all again.’
Kremy laughed wetly. ‘Sounds about right.’
Gideon beamed, heart alight. ‘You think they’ll sing songs about us back home one day?’
‘Gods, I hope not.’
♦
They returned some time later to find Frost calmly presiding over utter carnage. Torbek was collapsed on the ground with raw sugar spilling from his mouth and coating his fur as though he’d been caught eating snow in a blizzard; Gricko was groaning and rolling about clutching his stomach, one of his boots smouldering a little too close to the fire; Hootsie had gotten her foot stuck in a bowl and was hopping about trying to get it off, flinging batter every which way. And there in the centre of it all, Frost was calmly tending the fire, cooking up one last waffle to golden perfection. Kremy’s mouth watered at the sight.
Frost looked up as they approached.
‘Ah, Kremy, Gideon. I saved one for you.’
Kremy sat down, straightening his hat. Gideon resumed his place at Kremy’s side.
‘Thanks Frost, that’s mighty kind—’
‘Did Gideon kiss it better?’
‘Shut the fuck up, Gricko,’ said Kremy and Gideon automatically and simultaneously, seamlessly avoiding each other’s gazes as Frost passed them the waffle, quartered into aces.
♦