Steal Across the Sky by Nancy Kress

a way of sneaking up on him, but not here.
    “Aren’t the Kulari suspicious that you go off three or four times a day to talk to me? What do they think you’re leaving the village for?”
    “I don’t know. They’re never suspicious, never curious.”
    “You know, I would change places with you in a minute.”
    “I know you would, Soledad.” He was conscious of overusing her name, of making it an anchor in the blank frustration of his days. She
was
his anchor. He didn’t want to commlink Cam, off having dramatic adventures on Kular B, and Soledad didn’t tell him much about Cam. She had tact, Soledad. Why hadn’t he slept with her instead of Cam, so typically brash and American, on the voyage out?
    Because Cam looked a little like Gianna, even though no two women could have been more different, and Lucca had clutched at her like a drowning man.
Stupido
.
    Soledad listened carefully to the translator uploads he sent as often as possible; she knew everything that happened—or, rather, didn’t happen, in this static environment—on Kular. She said, “I really do think you can manage this, Lucca. You’re stronger than you think.”
    “Thank you. I better get back now. My ass is freezing.”
    She laughed and clicked off. Bored—she must be so bored up there in orbit. But, of course, so was he down here. Hytrowembireliaz had said that spring would bring a trading trip over the mountains and, Lucca fervently hoped, a more complex and interesting society to “witness.” But Soledad had given him his coordinates on the planet; his shuttle had crashed pretty far north. Spring was a long time away.
    Limping, leaning on his crude wooden crutch, he made it back to the village. Everyone was in the community lodge, where they spent most of the day. Shivering, Lucca crawled into his bed pile in Hytrowembireliaz’s hut, willing to trade lunch for privacy. But he wasn’t alone long.
    Chewithoztarel bounced into the hut, bringing with her snow and cold. She sat at the bottom of Lucca’s bed pile and leaned toward him, grinning. One of her front teeth had fallen out this morning, and her gap-toothed smile might have looked cute to anyone who liked children more than Lucca did. Or who wasn’t so frustrated.
    “I saw you!” the little girl said gleefully. “I saw you coming back from way over the hill! And Ragjuptrilpent saw you, too!”
    Not Ragjuptrilpent again. Of all the parallel customs that could have evolved in Kularian childhood, why was the winner “imaginary friends”? But . . . what matter if Chewithoztarel had seen Lucca return from the plain? No one else would ever question him about it and she wouldn’t follow him, or if she did, he could just send her back. Kularian children were obedient to adults. Lucca’s private and sanity-saving contacts with Soledad could go on, privately.
    Chewithoztarel said, “What is a ‘soledad’?”
     
    SLEEP-TALKING. AN EASY EXPLANATION . In some unremembered dream he had called out Soledad’s name, and Chewithoztarel had overheard. Thechild denied this, looking a little frightened at Lucca’s savage expression, and he forced himself to smile. “I said ‘Soledad’ when I was asleep, didn’t I?”
    “No. You said it outside. Ragjuptrilpent heard you. She told me.”
    Lucca willed patience. “All right, she heard me. What else did she hear?”
    “Just funny noises. Not real words. But you said ‘soledad’ many times and she remembered. What is a—”
    “It is nothing,” Lucca said, and turned away. He didn’t like her listening to his sleep-talk. So often his dreams were of Gianna, who did not belong on Kular A, who no longer belonged anywhere in the universe.
    Chewithoztarel said,
“Nothing
is nothing,” disgust and bafflement in her child’s voice.
    The next time he went out on the plain, he called Soledad
amica
, which he had never done before. If Soledad was startled by this, she didn’t say so. Maybe she thought he was cracking up. Lucca said the