“I suppose it’s up to the old man.” Grace knows his name is Methuselah, but she has never heard that name outside of a biblical context, and it’s hard to think of him as a person with a name like that.

“And I suppose you know how to work a gun,” she adds, as she finally crouches to examine the weapon frozen into the man’s hand. Warm water should be enough, but the process of getting it won’t be easy. They’ll need something to boil it in, and dry kindling, and a method of starting the fire. “But how am I to know you won’t turn it on me or anyone else in this place for so much as looking at you, the second it’s out of his hand and in yours?”