Fire Country (25 page)

I’m coming, Circ.

The world goes black.

A
ll that’s left is darkness.

I expected to see a burst of light, maybe the sun or the moon or the stars, or even all three
at once, coming to greet me, to welcome me to t’other side. But all I see is a thick fog of darkness. Dread fills my heart when I realize where I must be: Scorch. The underworld. ’Cause of my actions—disobeying my father, not fulfilling my duty as Bearer, running away—I been sentenced to eternal searnation in Scorch, to live forever with the fire god himself.

No chance of seeing Circ here.

Awareness leaves me and I fall into a deep pit of sleep.

~~~

It’s still dark when I awake. Sleep beckons me but I push him away, tell him to pick on someone else. Try a naughty prickler named Perry. He could use some sleep.

U
sing only my mind, I try to cast away the fog that surrounds me. My hands don’t work. Nor my legs. None of my parts, ’cept for my mind. Push, swim, breathe,
thud thud, thud thud, thud thud.
The beat of my heart is like thunder in my head.

Do
n’t make sense.

The dead’s hearts don’t beat.

Darkness surrounds and I fall away.

~~~

When I awake the third time, the world is one big mess of light. I cringe, shield my face. Maybe darkness was a better option. No! If I’m in the light, then I can see Circ! He’ll be here somewhere, wherever stars go when they’re off duty.

I re
member my beating heart. Musta been a bad dream.

Blink, blink, blink away the haze and the spots.

Blink again.

Blink some more.

The world reappears and I’m not in the land of the gods. I’m in the desert. Still. A hand on my chest reveals my heart: still beating. Not dead. As far from Circ as death from life.

A voice startles me. “You’re awake,” it says.

Everything comes rushing back in a swarm of memories. My mother’s face, red and old and stricken with the Fire; Bart’s rank breath on my tongue, his arousal pushed up hard against me; his dead body, limp and bloody at my mother’s hand; my flight, the alarms, the Hunt; the Cotees, all over me, tearing my flesh, ripping me away. “The Cotees,” I say, my voice whisper-soft.

“Dead,” the voice says. A male voice. Old. Maybe twenty. “You killed them.”

I’m dizzy and muddled, but I ain’t stupid. “Tugblaze,” I say. “I killed one, maybe two at the most, but not all.” I twist my neck to find the mouth that’s connected to the voice but everything’s still too bright and spotty.

A laugh, deep and slow. “Well, your mind’s recovering,” he says. “You’d already killed one when I chanced upon you, and you had your knife buried in another one, so I guess I can give you credit for that one too. The rest were mine.”

Violence is sharp and threatening in his tone. Shivers run down my spine. “What are you going to do to me?” Memories flash and dance. Bart grabbing me, holding me down, trying to
use
me.

“You have nothing to worry about. Soon as you’re well enough, we’ll be going our separate ways.” The sharpness is gone from his voice, replaced by a soothing melody that feels like the warmth from one of MedMa’s healing salves.

His shadow kneels over me, then the real him. I blink furiously, afraid this might be the last chance I have to glimpse he who saved me from the Cotees. He’s blurry at first, but then his image sharpens like a spear point. When it does, I jerk back, try to push to my feet, to run, to escape, to get as far away from him as I can. But my body won’t cooperate and all I do is spasm on the ground, feeling hot lashes of pain on my arms, legs, belly, ankle. Fierce, red pain everywhere. But the pain is nothing compared to the fear.

‘F
ore me stands one of them. The Marked. And all I can think ’bout is what my mother told me ’bout Brev:
He started the Marked and I never saw him again.

~~~

Apparently I passed out again. My body is in turmoil, fighting against the blood loss and the shock of all the bites and claw scrapes from the Cotees.

When I awake this time I’m ready. “Let me go,” I say, not opening my eyes, not wanting to see him again.

“You’re not a captive,” his voice comes back, clear and warm.

“Then why’d you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Save me.”

“Because you were in my trap.”

What? The steel-teethed trap is his? “So you owed me?”

“I don’t owe you a thing.”

“None of this woulda ever happened if not for your searin’ trap!” I say, raising my voice to the loudest it’s been. Still barely more’n a whisper.

“Not my fault you were stupid enough to step in it,” he says, keeping his voice irritatingly calm.

“Stupid
? How dare you! I almost died ’cause of your
burnin’
trap!” My eyes flash open and I wince when I see him standing over me. But this time I don’t try to run, just stare at him, trying to hide my disbelief at his appearance.

He’s practically naked, only a small brown loincloth covering his midsection. Like Circ was, he’s muscled from head to toe, but longer and leaner, like one of the trees I saw in ice country on a night that now seems like a million lifetimes ago.
His skin is hairless, either shaved or plucked or perhaps never there at all. But that’s not what startled me the first time I laid eyes on him. It was the markings. They cover him from head to toe, strange and black and rough, like the textured bark on the trees. Everything ’bout him is so much like the trees I almost expect him to sprout green leaves that’ll drop from his arms in the fall.

He sees me staring and smiles. “You like what you see?” he says, rolling each word off his lips.

I crinkle my nose in disgust. “’Bout as much as I like a dead tug carcass,” I say, “and I can’t help but stare at that just the same, too.”

He smirks. “It wasn’t my trap that almost killed you. You shouldn’t have been wandering the desert alone in the
dark. What were you doing out here by yourself?”

“That’s my business.” I realize I’m still staring at his body, trying to make sense of the markings. I
also realize I’ve barely even looked at his face.

When he replies
, my gaze snaps up. “Suit yourself,” he says, walking out of my field of vision. But his image remains, burned in my mind, where I can review it as long as I want. Even his head was free of hair, as bald as the day he was born, shaped like a dome. A nice-shaped head, for what it’s worth. It’s worth nothing. Nobody cares about a nice-shaped head. Even his head had the markings, thick bands and arrowheads, and strange shapes I don’t recognize. Only his face is free of them. Which is a good thing ’cause he had a handsome face. Not exactly smoky, like Circ, but pleasing to the eye. Not repulsive, like the rest of him.

Brev. The name pops in my head and alth
ough I don’t want to talk to the Marked one anymore, I know I hafta. I hafta ask him.

I try to sit up, but a flash of pain bursts in my skull and I’m gone again.

~~~

When I regain consciousness it’s night again. The stars are out, but I can’t find Circ. He’s probably looking for me in the land of the gods, where I’d be if not for the Marked man.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

I can’t see him, which makes me uncomfortable, so I try to sit up again, taking it slower this time. One elbow up, then the other. Ease higher until I’m sitting. He’s sitting across the warm glow of a cook fire. A rusty ol’ pot
’s a-steaming away, filling my nostrils with an aroma that’s both tangy and bitter at the same time.

“My name’s my b
us—”

“Your business, I know,” he says, cutting me off. “Well, I’m Feve, in case you’d like to know. My name’s not business, far as I know. It’s just a name.”

Through the crackling fire he almost looks normal. I can’t see his markings, just his face. He could be a guy from the village. A potential Call.

“I’m Siena,” I say, wondering why I said it.

He smiles, undimpled but warm. Like everything ’bout him. Warm as a spring afternoon. “That wasn’t so hard, now was it?”

“You ain’t charming nothing else outta me,” I say.

“So it was my charm that did it?” he says, his eyes flashing with firelight.

“No, that’s not what I meant!
I meant…you just twisted my words.”

“Twisted?” he says, the amused smile still playing on his lips. “You said it, not me.”

I sit back, leaning on my elbows. If that’s the way he’s gonna play things, I won’t say another word, even though I know I hafta.

Brev
. A name I’d never heard a few days back—now a name I can’t forget.

He rises, bringing his marking
s back into view. A snake coils around his stony abdomen, disappearing behind him. Three spears cross in such a way that they almost look like the skeleton of a tent. There are many more markings, but my brain goes dizzy from trying to make sense of them all.

“Here, drink this,” he says, dipping a skin into the steaming pot. He hands it to me.

“What is it?” I ask, turning up my nose when I taste bitterness in the steam.

“Marked secret,” he says, winking. “It’ll help with the pain and the healing.”

I sit up, accept it, cup the skin in both hands. “What are you, some kind of MedMa?”

“MedMa?” he says, cocking his head at an angle.

“Medicine Man,” I elaborate. “We’ve got one in our village. He heals the sick, treats the wounded.”

He laughs, sits down next to me. Too close. I edge away.

“All of my people learn how to heal,” he says.

His answer surprises me. All of them? Seems like a lot of wasted time when one person could do the job just fine. As if reading my mind, he says, “You’d be dead if I didn’t know the right herbs to use, how to wrap your wounds.”

My wounds? The biting, the clawing, the trap. Wounds! Of course I’d have them in plenty. But I’ve barely been conscious long enough to think ’bout anything, much less my wounds. I chew on his words and then spit them out when I realize what he’s done. “What’d you do to me?” I shriek, pulling away from him, clawing at my britches as if I’m one of the Cotees that tried to kill me. When I lift my bloody, torn trousers up high enough, I see the truth. Shreds of cloth are wrapped tightly ’round my ankle, my legs below my knees, my legs
above
my knees—waaaay above my knees.

My hands scrabb
le at my shirt and lift it too. Heavy cloth covers the skin, spotted with blood. “You touched me?” I accuse.

“You were dying,” he says calmly. “I treated you.”

The thought of me lying there unconscious while this Marked man did whatever it is he did to me—touched or bandaged or
treated
me—makes me feel sick and I throw down the skin, letting the bitter, tangy liquid bubble out. “How dare you?” I say.

“You’d rather be dead?” he asks evenly.

“No…I mean, yes…I mean, maybe,” I say, sputtering. Protectively, I cover my chest with my arms, not dissimiliar to when Bart was looking me up and down.

His voice is devoid of all humor. “What happened to you, Siena?”

When he says my name it fills my heart with warmth, as if it’s someone I care ’bout speaking it. But he’s no one, a stranger, one of the Marked. “Nothing.”

“What do the charms on your bracelet mean?” he asks.

“Nothing.

“What about the one with the
pointer? What does that mean?”

I say nothing.

“Who does it belong to?” he asks, and my eyes jerk to his. Does he know? Are his questions all part of an act when really he knows the truth ’bout everything? ’Bout what happened to me, to Circ—what’s happening even now to the village?

“What do you know ’
bout it?” I say, breaking my silence.

Feve looks at me with an intensity that’s almost scary. Almost. “Tell me,” I demand.

“I don’t know anything, but I’m a good guesser,” he says.

“Well so am I,” I say. “Does the name Brev mean anything to you?”

His eyes snap to mine and there’s a flare of anger, which ain’t what I expected. “What did you say?” he says, all warmth stripped from his voice.

I pause, wondering why Feve suddenly seems so hot and bothered. “You heard me,” I say.

“That name means nothing,” he says. “’Cause he’s dead.”

~~~

He won’t say another word after that, no matter how hard I try to make him. Finally I drink a fresh skin of the healing liquid and it helps with the pain. Warm and confused, I drift off to sleep.

When I awake, Feve is gone.