Beretrice

Beretrice chittered softly, unconsciously wringing her small, hand-like paws. She was small enough to fit on a bookshelf, and it was from the third shelf up that she watched Nolen napping on the clean, curved built-in couch across the room from her.

She could sense he wasn't really out though, just exhausted and unable to sleep, trying to rest if he could. It had only been a day since he'd buried Kissa. Beretrice hissed at him, and he opened an eye to look for her.

“It'll be all right, Berry,” he murmured, his voice ragged with his own grief.

She hissed and turned her back to him, curling her fluffy tail around herself. Only Kissa could call her Berry. When his breathing evened out and slowed, she turned back to him. He was asleep at last, furrows of weary pain dug along his mouth and beneath his shadowed eyes. His big brutish hand was closed around the locket on his chest.

Frustrated, she silently climbed down the bookcase and up onto the back of the couch to get a better look. The locket, shaped like a heart and adorned with embossed flowers and scrollwork, had disappeared into his giant mitt. She bit back another hiss and scampered back to hide beneath the enameled iron woodstove.

She needed that locket. It was exactly what she needed to mend her own heart. Ruffling the silvery fluff on her chest, her nimble fingers searched for the edges of the opening there. She couldn't open it on her own, but she could feel it, and within that compartment, she could feel her mechanical heart was broken, shattered somehow by Kissa's death.

Beretrice wasn't purely a mechanical creature, but a carefully modified combination of biological and mechanical parts, meant to last a lifetime. She understood her kind were rare now, most lost in the End, with no one to continue their manufacture left.

Her first memory was of a sudden light, then Kissa's face. Her mistress had only been a child when her father had found the soft silicone pod containing the infant Beretrice, resting in perfect stasis until the pod had been peeled open.

“She's beautiful,” Kissa had breathed, and Beretrice had felt the same way. Her tiny heart surged with love and connection to the child as Kissa had scooped her wet, shivering body up, cradling her close and gently drying her with a rough cloth.

“You'll have to take care of her,” Kissa's father had said gruffly. “She'll need to eat once a day to make the energy to function. That'll be your responsibility. And you'll have to be the one to help her dispose of any waste, should she make any.”

“I will take care of her forever,” seven-year-old Kissa had promised, stroking Beretrice's grey and black head. “She looks like a cat-monkey! Her name is Beretrice. Do you like that, Beretrice?”

Beretrice rubbed her small, delicately-built head to ground herself away from that memory. As much as she cherished it, the work of holding it only increased the painful pressure on her damaged heart.

This was easily the worst injury she'd ever had; the ache was so deep in moments she could not get a full breath in. She padded over to look out of the broad, transparent door into the back garden, where carefully placed stones obscured and protected the ugly scar in the ground where Nolen had placed and buried Kissa.

“This is a Now!House,” Nolen had said in wonder when they'd found this place by pure luck three days back. Kissa limped carefully toward it from her trekker, one of Nolen's arms wrapped around her to help her along. She was dripping blood along her side and leg; the scavengers who'd tried to rob them of their trekkers had been armed with bladed weapons. Though they'd been no match for Nolen's microdrones and Kissa's shockstick, they'd gotten a couple good hits in.

“I have no idea what that is,” Kissa had said, wrinkling her nose as she inspected the exterior of the house. On her shoulder, Beretrice had been chittering under her breath and grooming her mistress' resplendant curls in an attempt to comfort her. “I'm ok, Berry,” Kissa said, reaching up to stroke Beretrice's head.

“It's an automated house,” Nolen said. He helped Kissa sit on one of the benches bracketing the wide front patio, paved with flat blue-grey stones. The house itself was a dome, covered in a photorealistic skin that matched the woods around it. The front entry was covered with a leafy arch, and Beretrice recognized absently that the leaves covering it and parts of the roof were energy collectors, gathering energy from the sun and their own movements in the winds that might pass through.

Kissa groaned, and Nolen hurried to the entrance interface, plugging his disrupter into it so he could reset it and make himself the recognized owner. He worked quickly, his face haggard with worry.

“Steals,” Beretrice had managed to say, and hissed.

“He's not stealing,” Kissa said. “No one lives here anymore. This is an empty house. No one's been here for a long time, probably since the End.”

“It was probably a vacation cabin for someone who lived in the Storm Lands. They must not have made it out. Our gain,” Nolen said, his fingers moving over the fingerpad of the disrupter.

Beretrice howled in alarm as Kissa slid down and fell unconscious. She clung for dear life to her mistress' shoulder when Nolen hurriedly scooped Kissa up, carrying Kissa's slight, bleeding body at a run into the Now!House, the door sliding open with a welcoming chime.

Now Beretrice scurried along the wall of the living room to the hallway, finding the room Kissa had died in, the only bedroom, though there were sleeping alcoves built in the living room and hall. The stained bedding was gone – removed by the house's workers, spider-like robots who had hurried out of baseboard alcoves as soon as Kissa's body had been carried out into the back garden, wrapped in clean linens from the hallway closet. A clean coverlet lay on the sunlit bed, the smell of disinfectant still lingering.

The dome had no windows, not as Beretrice would have previously recognized them. Thick steel ribs formed the dome itself, meeting at the top like a star, different arms visible from different rooms. Between the arms, one-way transparent walls allowed Beretrice to see out, the sweeping views obscured only by the leaf-like energy collectors that powered the house.

She climbed up onto the bed, feeling the soft, ribbed chenille beneath the pads of her fingers. It should have been the perfect place for Kissa to recuperate from her injuries – certainly they'd never stayed anywhere so clean and comfortable before.

But in only a day, she'd been gone, her body wracked by fever and convulsions.

She woke to Nolen patting the bed beside her, knowing better than to touch her to wake her. She hissed at him.

He patiently ignored the hiss.

“I'm going to Kinsfree to trade for some supplies,” he said. “I'll come back here, don't worry. Unless you'd like to come with.”

“Come,” she managed. She knew many words, but could only say a few, her cat-like mouth not shaped for easy speech.

She rode in a basket on the front of Nolen's trekker. They left Kissa's trekker in a shed at the Now!House, camouflaged to blend in with the surroundings the same way the house was. Nolen had a bandage wrapped around his left hand from his thoughtless attempt to help her into the basket. Though he'd sworn in surprise, he hadn't sworn at her, and she sniffed haughtily at him as she'd climbed into the basket unassisted.

At night, he built a fire and made food for both of them, and they slept in the open. She found herself sleeping near enough to him to be sheltered by his giant body.

It took three days to reach Kinsfree, a loosely scattered settlement that had grown up from five or six smaller settlements placed too close together, taking advantage of the clean lake they'd spread along. At no point on the journey had Beretrice been able to take the locket from him.

“Steal,” she said mournfully.

“We're not going to steal,” he said, not realizing she was discussing her own behavior. “We're going to trade.”

They'd got some good trades for their small hoard of pristine clothing and a few precious books from the Now!House, not least of all seeds to sow so they could have a renewable source of food. Then they spent three days riding back to the Now!House, watching for thieves and scavs who might try to steal the house or their supplies from them.

The last night in the open, Beretrice begrudgingly tucked herself into Nolen's jacket to sleep. Maybe to soothe him just the tiniest bit, to ease the grieving sounds that rumbled in his throat as he slept.

He couldn't have loved Kissa as she did, how could anyone? But maybe he loved her a little, in his limited not-Kissa human being way.

They put the supplies away, Beretrice carrying whatever she could in her small paws, dragging the seed packets in bundles into the garden shed. After their long work, they both lay on the couch, watching the energy collectors ruffle in a rising storm. Here they were safe, from the storm, from people, just safe, as safe as they could ever have wished Kissa would be. As one they both sat up enough to look out to the stone-covered grave. Nolen sighed.

“She loved you so much, Beretrice,” he said. He reached down to touch the locket on his chest. Involuntarily, Beretrice made a long, mournful sound. “Ah, little one.” He pulled the locket off over his head. Nolen carefully separated the two halves, handing one heart-shaped half to her before replacing his own half around his neck.

Beretrice touched her half, whimpering. The displayed picture was Kissa, Beretrice on her shoulder. Kissa was grinning, that wide, troublemaker's smile, one hand on her hip, one hand lifted to wave at Nolen as he took the picture.

Beretrice touched the picture, and it changed to one of Nolen, sitting crosslegged on the ground in the light of a campfire, working on something tiny and electronic. More pictures surfaced at each touch of Beretrice's paw pad, Nolen, herself, but few others of Kissa. She kept pressing until the first picture was displayed again.

“It's a beautiful picture of the two of you,” Nolen said, his voice rough.

Beretrice held her half of the locket up, desperately plucking at the edge of the cover to her chest compartment. “Heart,” she told Nolen, working to get the word out.

He understood. His nimble fingers opened the compartment for her, and she pressed the half-locket into a narrow space between her inner workings. Closing her up again, he rubbed her head softly, as if he'd forgotten in the moment she might bite him.

“Better, Beretrice?” he asked.

She clambered up his chest, snuggling herself into the side of his neck as she'd done so often with Kissa. “Berry,” she muttered, wriggling a little to get comfortable for a nap, the agony in her heart for a moment eased.