Fire Country (26 page)

H
e left me a skin of herbal tea, enough Cotee meat to last a quarter full moon, and a head so muddled I’m afraid it’s full of durt and sand and rocks and maybe a bit of ’zard blaze.

I dunno where he went, and I’m not sure whether to care. I mean, he saved my life but if it wasn’t for his searin’ trap…the Cotees woulda caught me anyway. The realization sets in hard and fast. I probably shoulda been nicer to him. But still, the thought of him lifting my trousers up, up, up, too far up, reminds me of Bart ripping off my dress—even though I know in my heart they ain’t the same thing at all. Bart was taking from me, Feve was giving to me.

I can’t believe I met one of the Marked Ones! I almost want to scream it out loud. No one back in the village would ever believe me. They’re the people of myths and legends. Not myth. Not legend. Real. Just like my mother said.

The fire’s dying so I stir it up, cast a few prickler skins on it, cook up a swatch of meat. I
eat slowly, afraid my stomach’ll reject the heavy food after going without for so long. It stays down and I cover the fire and smoke with sand ’fore I leave.

Everything hurts, but a few sips of Feve’s tea takes away most of the pain—or at least enough of it that I can walk again. Instinctively, I shove a hand in my pocket and feel for my knife. It’s there. I pull it out, remove it from its sheath, examine it. Clean and shiny—not one speck of Co
tee blood on it. Another gift from Feve. If I ignore the fact that he had to stick his hand in my pocket to put the knife back, I almost feel warm from the gesture.

Everything I’ve seen from Feve certainly
changes my perspective on the Marked Ones, ’specially now that I know my mother’s true love was the one who started the tribe in the first place. Maybe they’re not so scary and violent and cannibalistic as everyone seems to think. Or maybe I just got lucky ’cause there was plenty of Cotee meat to satisfy his hunger. I shudder at the thought of how different things mighta gone if he’d found just me caught in his trap.

I look ’
round, get my bearings, and continue southwest like my mother told me to. The day is hot at first, but then, like most spring days, gives way to a burst of rain that stifles much of the heat. Three days pass with periods of both rain and sun, stutter-stepping at the whims of Mother Nature. I eat Cotee meat every night, drink Feve’s tea, get stronger with each passing day.

The fourth day since Feve’s departure—which I s’pose is the fifth or perhaps sixth day since I left the village—I spot it, a change in the endless monotony of the desert. From far away it looks like just a small crack in the earth, perhaps a hidey-hole for a ’zard or snake, but as I approach, it grows bigger’n bigger, until it’s a gaping crevice, wide and deep and winding off into the distance.

Southwest, where the river lies dead like a snake
…

There’s no water in the ol’ riverbed
, save for a few durty puddles from the spring rains. If it ever was a river, it’s long dead. And as for the snake part, the way it twists and turns proves I’m in the right place. Although it’s winding, there’s no doubt it’s meandering in the same direction as I wanna go. Southwest.

On and on I follow the Dead Snake River, camping along the edge, hoping that each new day’ll bring me to the next landm
ark—what was it my mother said?
…and the rocks hold hands like lovers.

I picture two rocks that look exactly like Circ and me, rock arms outstretched, rock hands entwined. Were Circ and I lovers? Does a single kiss make lovers? As I plod along I’m blinded by the tears in my eyes, as blurry as a knock to the head. Whatever Circ and I were, it went beyond the simple labels of humans. Lovers, friends,
family…

…soul mates.

That’s the only one that feels right when I think it. But Circ’s soul’s gone far away, where I can’t reach it, where maybe I can never reach it. I dry my eyes on my sleeve and keep moving.

~~~

I’m down to the last of my Cotee meat. The herbal tea ran out a coupla days ago but it did its job. Although I’ll have scars from the bites, they’re all healed over with no infection. ’Cause of Feve and his bandages and Medicine Man training. I’d have died twice over if not for him.

I ain’t no Hunter.

The women of the village don’t Hunt. They gather and Bear and look after the Totters and wash bloody, filthy clothes. Not Hunt.

But I gotta get food and more’n just prickler skins which leave me feeling unsatisfied
. So I take my knife and my speed and both my left feet into the desert to catch me whatever I can catch—a burrow mouse or ’zard or something. I don’t venture too far from the dried out river though for fear of getting lost.

I ain’t no Hunter.

I know I already said that but after three thumbs of sun movement in the desert I prove it. The ’zards are cleverer’n I ever knew. Here I been thinking they scuttle and scamper ’round aimlessly all day, just waiting for us humans to catch them and skin them. The first one I see is back in its hole the moment I give a funny look in its direction. A moment later it pops outta a different hole on t’other side of me. When I take a step in its direction it jumps back down and outta sight.

The burrow mice are no easier. I fin
d a whole nest of them, but no matter how deep I dig, all I find are more’n more tunnels with no mice. At some point I realize I ain’t gonna be killing anything, but it ain’t only ’cause I can’t seem to get close enough to stick one of them; it’s ’cause I don’t
wanna
stick one of them. The thought of taking the life of something so small makes me feel sick to my stomach. To save my life from a pack of Cotees, yeah, I’ll slash and fight like a wooloo person, but I can’t just stab an innocent creature.

I trudge
back to the river emptyhanded.

That evening I eat what’s left of the Cotee with a side of prickler. Wash it down with a shirt squeeze of rainwater when it starts pouring. Sleep, wet and exhausted next to a fire that’s all smoke and wet prickler skins.

~~~

The sun goddess drives Mother Nature and her armies of dark clouds back. By afternoon my clothes are dry, as if they were never soaked through in the first place.

When I get hungry I munch on the tug jerky my mother put in my pockets. Soon I’ll have nothing left but the pricklers growing across my path.

Midafternoon, when the sun is long past its apex and starting to sink on down, the Dead Snake River ends. Just ends, like someone filled in the rest of it with durt and sand, made it look like it was never there at all. The tail of the snake—or is it the head?—seems to point off across a wide expanse of flat land. A sure sign as any, so I follow it.

Just as the world is darkening, I spot them. Statuesque soldiers, set out in perfect little rows, directly in my path. Hundreds of them, weather-beaten and proud and probably relatives of Perry. Pricklers. It’s a field of pricklers. I ain’t never seen anything like it. Most pricklers are loners, wearing their solitude like a badge of honor. Occasionally you’ll find a small group of them huddled together—prickler families we call them—but never more’n four in a patch.

As I enter their ranks, they seem to close in
’round me, watch me, like they’re guarding something. But that’s wooloo talk. They ain’t no more alive’n Perry was. Yeah, that’s right, Perry, you heard me!

Night falls while I’m still am
ongst the pricklers, and I hafta squint to avoid banging into them—there are that many. Something big’n dark rises up ’fore me, but I can’t see what. It’s not alive, that much is obvious. It’s just something big…and dark. A rocky bluff or black sand dune or something.

I can’t see, so I make camp right there within the merry band of
pricklers. I’d like to say I don’t conversate with them, but a few of the prickly buggers knew Perry from way back when, so I can’t help but to do a little reminiscing, tell a few stories and jokes at Perry’s expense.

Sleep takes me.

~~~

I awake to lovers holding hands.

It ain’t like I pictured it, with two well-cut statues that resemble humans walking hand in hand, but the landmark is clear nonetheless. The big, dark form that I could feel looming in front of me last night is really a rock formation. On either side, pillars of rock rise up, one with a broad, pluming base that narrows at the woman’s “waist” ’fore curving back out to give her a nice shape. Her lover’s body is bulky and sharp, all angles and edges—no doubt a man. They’re connected by a rock bridge that extends from either of them—their “arms”—which meet in a tender embrace in the middle.

A shout rises up in the distance and suddenly the previously barren desert is teeming with human life. Half a dozen forms charge my way. Double that many
run in the opposite direction, directly beneath the arch of the giant lovers, hollering as they go. Raising the alarm.

Even from a distance I can see their half-naked, lean
, muscular bodies. Their shaved heads. My eyes might be betraying me, but I think I can see their markings, too, dark and twisting on their skin. The Marked. Not just Feve, who might be one of the few civilized ones, but many of them. Racing toward me, carrying sharp sticks.

Uncivilized. Cannibalistic. Bloodthirsty.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Feve wasn’t acting his usual self.

With their shouts loud and frightening behind me, I run.

Through the ranks of the pricklers I run, stumbling once, regaining my footing, clipping the side of a small bulbous prickler that seems to jump out in front of me; sliding face and chest first in the durt, scrambling, scrambling, scrambling to my feet; heart pumping wildly, urging me on; two left feet moving in tandem once more, but conspiring against me in whispers. To someone watching, my flight is surely comedic and laughable, but to me it’s terrifying. These feral men’ll catch me, pin me down, and then what? I don’t wanna find out.

Out of the pricklers I dash, finally finding my running rhythm out in the open. The shouts are closer and I get the sense that they’re not just mindless screams but carrying messages, either for eac
h other or for me. But I’m not ’bout to stop to interpret them.

All of a sudden the earth falls away beneath me as I reach the edge of the Dead Snake River. I teeter over the edge,
waving my arms chaotically, but then manage to hold off gravity.

I take a step away from the ledge, feeling the fall that never happened in my gut.

I glance back, see only the blurred forms of my pursuers closing in, much closer’n I expected as if they have superhuman speed, like they’re part Cotee or Killer.

I turn
to the edge once more. Running’ll get me nowhere. I got no choice.

I hafta
jump.

My muscles tense, preparing for the twenty-foot drop onto the dry riverbed.

I hold my breath—

“
Burnin’ wait!” a voice cries. It sounds strange for a Marked voice. So unlike Feve’s, which was warm and steady and controlled, this voice is wild and rough and passionate, like a spinning dust storm. And familiar. So familiar, and yet not how I remember it.

Don’t trust it—

But I know that voice.

Could be a trick—

How do you trick a voice?

My inner struggle tugs me toward the edge. One foot slides over, sending sand and rocks careening down the nearly vertical slope. But that voice…

I whirl ’round and see her. The voice don’t match the body.

“Lara?” I say.

S
he’s too tall to be Lara. And yet she carries herself with the strength and confidence that Lara always had. Also like Lara, her hair is cropped short, like a boy’s, not fully bald like the image of the Marked my mind conjured up from a distance, but nearly so. Her body is toned and sheening with sweat from the run, covered only by a swatch of cloth ’round her chest and a flap on the front and back of her torso, leaving her hips exposed. Images are painted on her skin: a sun, a flame, a tree.

I gasp.

The voice, so familiar, but not Lara’s…

“Siena,
burn it all to scorch, you found us!” my sister says.

It’s her, but not her. Skye
, but as far from the Skye I remember as possible. I’m frozen to the ground, like a cold breeze has blown in from ice country, cementing my feet. Can it be? Can it really be her?

I’m dreaming, I’m dreaming, I pinch myself,
Ow!
It hurts. It hurts so good. It’s real—all of it.

I run to her. She throws down her sharp stick and catches me, her arms so strong and firm and
protective, and I feel like I’ll never be in danger again as long as I stay near her. Near my sister.

“Sie,” she murmurs. “I can’t
searin’ believe it’s really burnin’ you.” It’s my sister’s voice, but rougher, sharper ’round the sides, like each word is cut all along its edges. And filled with obscenities the likes of which I ain’t never heard flying from her mouth.

My tears are
swarming but I don’t feel ashamed. It’s all there, in my eyes, the gashes in my soul laid bare in the streams of moisture on my face. Bart. Mother. Feve. Father. Circ: most of all him.

“Dead,” I say, not sure who I’m referring to. Maybe all of them
, ’cept Feve. And Father, who I only wish were dead.

“Lara told me,”
she says, holding me out to look at my face.

“Lara’s here?” I say, eyes widening.

“Yeah, she made it, too.” Skye looks older’n I remember her, wiser somehow. With her short hair, she should look boyish, but instead it seems to only make her all the more feminine, more beautiful. And yet there’s a wildness ’bout her, a freeness, something I ain’t never seen in her ’fore.

“What’
d she tell you?” I say. She wipes away the tears from half of my face. The side for—

“Circ,” she says
simply.

I close my eyes.

“I’m so burnin’ sorry,” she says, thinking I’ve closed my eyes for Circ. What she don’t know is that the tears she hasn’t wiped away, the tears on t’other side of my face, are for someone else.

“Mother’s got the Fire,” I say, scared to say the rest of it, that by now she’s dead, that F
ather has a cure but keeps it for himself, that she saved me from Bart.

She pulls me close and we hold each other for a long time.

~~~

“Siena!” Lara yells as I enter the camp
beside Skye.

She runs up
and gives me a hug. I hug her back even harder. “You were talking to the Wilds the whole time?” I whisper in her ear.

“Course,” she whisper
s back. “They recruited me long ago. I was never cut out for the Call.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“We weren’t sure you’d want to come, and your mother—” she says, but then stops, throwing a hand over her mouth.

“My mother what?” I ask, sharper’n I intended.

“You’d better let your sister tell you,” she says. “Look, Siena, this was always what I wanted, to get out of the village, to join the Wild Ones, but you…”

“I wasn’t a sure thing and you didn’t want me to tell anyone,” I finish for her.

She nods. “But that doesn’t matter now. You’re here.”

We’re still whispering and Skye’s watching us suspiciously. I pull away and raise my voice.
“I’m here. But where’s here?” I ask, scanning the camp.

Dozens of girls are moving ’
bout, many of them with short hair like Skye and Lara, carrying on with their business, glancing at us curiously but not outright staring. They’re all wearing the same two-piece cloths that leave little to imagination. They’re also all lean and muscled and look like they could snap bones with their bare hands.

Skye answers. “We call it Wildtown. It’
s hidden from all directions ’cause of the canyons, but we can still easily git out the way you came in, ’neath the lover’s hands.”

Unbelievable. The Wild Ones are real, but they don’t look wild at all. On the contrary, they look civilized, with tents and storage sheds and even cook fires that send wisps of smoke curling
over the canyon walls. They don’t eat raw meat after all.

I scan the canyons
, which are pocked with caves. Girls are moving in and out of the caves, carrying bundles of prickler skins and scrubgrass and
weapons
. Spears and daggers, bows and pouches of pointers. Enough weapons to outfit every Hunter back in the village.

“Why do you have so many weapons?” I ask, frowning.

“Fire country’s a burnin’ dang’rous place,” Skye says.

I nod. She do
n’t hafta tell me.

“Are you ready to meet the others?” Lara says, a smile on her lips.

“Meet them?” They don’t look too friendly. Other’n their furtive glances, everyone’s pretty much ignored me since I arrived. Even the girls who found me with my sister didn’t say a word to me, just strode ahead of us, as if I didn’t exist. I get the feeling that things won’t be any different here’n the village. As usual, I’ll be hated for being Scrawny. Always the outsider.

“
Searin’ right,” Skye says, flashing a smile as big as Lara’s. What am I missing?

“Uh, sure,” I say.

“Can I do it?” Lara says to Skye.

“
All yers,” Skye replies. I look back and forth between them, trying to figure out why they suddenly seem so cheerful. My eyes settle on Lara, who raises two fingers to her mouth and blows out, letting out a whistle, loud and shrill.

Abruptly, all activity in Wildtown ceases. Prickler skins are discarded, weapons are dropped in the durt, budding cook fires are ignored. Every girl runs toward me, cheering and smiling and whooping and hollering.

Naturally, I shrink back, somewhat afraid, somewhat thrilled by the sudden attention. They close in, the mob surrounding me. Cries of “Welcome, Siena!” and “You did it!” ring out ’round me as they pick me up, clap me on the back, pass me around. Something sparks in me and I can’t hold back the laughter. I feel giddy and excited and tearful and
wild
. Completely wild, like I’m already one of them, a long-haired, Scrawny version of them. Tears of joy stream down my cheeks as I laugh harder’n I’ve laughed in many full moons, years, maybe ever.

For a moment I’m happy. Without a word of question, they’ve accepted me as one of them.

~~~

After the reception they gave me I’m left breathless.
Every girl knows my name ’cause apparently Skye’s been talking ’bout me since the moment she arrived. And, although I was introduced to every last one of them, I can’t remember a single name.

“
You wanna git the scorch outta here?” Skye finally says. I don’t want to be rude, but with Skye’s invitation comes a chance to get away. Getting attention is much more tiring’n I expected it to be.

I nod, and as she whisks me away I thank as many of the girls as I can
, meaning it with every thud of my heart. Lara tags along like my shadow.

Skye takes me to her tent.

Inside, we sit cross-legged in the middle of a wide space, in which a second bed has been added for me to sleep in. Our legs form a triangle, Skye’s and Lara’s and mine. My head’s still buzzing with excitement.

“
How’re you feelin’?” Skye asks, reaching out to squeeze my hand.

I search my body for the strongest feeling but there are so many. “I—I don’t know. Happy and sad and surprised and
everything.
”

Skye smiles. “I
know exactly whatcha mean. I’s the same way when I arrived, more surprised’n a newborn baby tug. Not everyone’s been groomed since birth to be a burnin’ Wild, like Lara ’ere.”

Lara blushes. “I wasn’t groomed
from birth
, maybe from a Totter…”

“You were made for this,” I say to Lara.
Without even trying she fits in with these—these warriors. I’m somewhere between six and sixty miles behind.

“
You were too!” Lara protests.

I laugh, hold out my tent-pole arms. “Tell that to my body.”

“It’s not about that!” she says. “Tell her, Skye.”

I look to my sister
, once more adjusting to the new her. Everything ’bout her is different. Not just the short hair and her physique, as muscly and lithe as a Killer, but her eyes, too, still brown, but with a steel gray behind her gaze. Also her voice, as cut as her body, as if it’s made from stone. It’s filled with slang and language so colorful it’d make Mother cringe all the way up in the land of the gods. “She’s burnin’ right, Sie. It’s what’s in yer heart that matters. Lara tol’ us all ’bout the Killer attack, how you tried to save Circ.”

“And about the Glassies,” Lara adds.

“The baggards,” Skye adds.

I shake my head. “
Circ ended up having to save me. And the Glassies? You hadta practically drag me into it, Lara,” I say.

“You were already there, remember?” Lara says.

“Tell me everythin’,” Skye says. “I wanna hear this blaze from you.”

“First tell me ’
bout your markings,” I say, glancing at her abdomen.

~~~

Her stomach is as flat as the upper parts of the canyon walls, as flat as my stomach even, but like sheetrock, hard and stacked with muscle.

“Hit me,” she says. I stare at her strangely. “Go ahead.”

“I don’t wanna hit you,” I say.

“Burnin’ hit me!” she repeats, louder this time.

“Just do it,” Lara says. “She won’t stop asking until you do it.”

Tightening my hand into a fist, I aim for the tree marking to the left of her belly button. “Ow!” I grimace when my knuckles connect with her stomach, which might actually be harder’n sheetrock. I pull back my hand, massaging my fingers.

“Father wouldn’t recognize me now, eh?” she says proudly.

“
I
don’t recognize you,” I say. My fingers return to her stomach, graze her skin. A sun. A flame. A tree. No coincidence. “Our charms,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says. “I hadta git rid of the charms
, too many bad memories. But I wanted to keep these ones permanently.” She nods at her markings.

“Why?” I say, my hand jerking protectively to cover my own bracelet. Circ’s charm.

“Burnin’ filthy customs and Laws of the Heaters,” she says. “First rule: ferget everythin’ you learned in that place. Right now.”

I frown, think ’
bout it, swing the pointer charm back’n forth with the tip of my finger. “If you don’t believe in the customs, then why mark the charm symbols on your skin at all?”

She looks away, at the side of the tent. “I hadta keep the three most important people close by.
Lara,” she says, “can I speak with Sie ’lone for a while?”

Without
another word, Lara scoots outta the tent.

~~~

“What do you know?” Skye asks when Lara’s gone.

I stare at her, this imposter that’s trying to be my sister. “
’Bout what?” I say.

“Ma. How you got here. Any of it.”

I shrug. “I don’t know much. Mother told me next to nothing till the night of my Call, and then she just said she’d sent you here and she was doing the same for me. And she gave me directions.” I shrug again.

Skye pushes out a breath. “Guess she had more time to talk to me,” she says. “She tol’ me most everythin’.”

“She told you about Brev and the Marked?” I say, and as soon as I see Skye’s expression, I know she didn’t. Least not everything.

“She tol’ me ’
bout Brev. But what the scorch does he hafta do with the Marked?” Skye asks.

I tell her what little I know, which is next to
nothing. How he couldn’t hang ’round the village with Mother not being allowed to see him. How he left. That he started the Marked.

“Ain’t that interestin’,” Skye says, mulling it over for a bit. In my mind is flashing
Feve, Feve, Feve
, like some kind of bright star that can’t decide if it wants to shine or not. Should I tell her? Should I tell her that I’ve met a Marked? I can’t. ’Cause then she’ll know I was too weak to make it here on my own.