After all her talk about helping me Erg’s already passed out in my pocket. I’ve been out here in the cold for what, by conventional standards, would surely amount to hours. My swans stay close, batting me with wings made clumsy by their bindings, and in their warmth and gentleness I start to nod. “Don’t your parents worry about you?” a voice says behind me. “Working here?” Tomin, of course. I kind of figured he’d be back. “Parents?” I say, snapping awake. “I think I might have had one or two of those once. I can barely remember.” He walks in front of me and sits down right on the bloodstained snow. “What happened to them?” It’s an uncomfortably direct question, but that’s kind of admirable. The easiest thing, for him and for me, would have been to keep on playing it as a joke. “One dead, one gone,” I say. “Not that I can recall the details or anything, but those are the usual options. How about yours?” Tomin tips his head and considers that a lot more seriously than I’d anticipated.
