The Boys of Fire and Ash (8 page)

“Hey! Hey!” Blaze rushed over to Av and tried to pry the dagger out of his grip. “Put that away, will you? Wanna get us arrested?”

Av didn't answer, I guess because like me he had no idea what that meant, though Blaze didn't seem to be waiting for us to respond. He pulled a pouch from his pocket and began counting a handful of silver pieces as he continued farther through the crowd.

Av looked to me, his wild eyes making it clear he didn't want to venture into the masses. Neither did I. I shrugged my shoulders, defeated, and followed after Blaze.

Children shrieked and giggled as they ran by and through our legs. Large, rusted metal objects rattled as they plowed through the streets. I recognized some from the Landfill back home. They hissed and roared as they thundered by, the people they carried shouting at everyone to get out of their way. I could see Digger ahead of me, cowering behind Blaze with his eyes shut tight, his hands over his ears. Sharp whistles cut through the air as men waving colorful fabrics fought to get my attention; the jingling of trinkets and screams and cries of babies surged and waned as people
moved by me. I'd never heard noise like this, and a new panic swelled in my chest.

Blaze stopped by a stand and spoke to the boy behind it. I wanted to know what they were saying, what Blaze was up to, but the words were not mine and I wondered where Blaze had picked them up. Did all Brothers who left learn how to speak with the words the Abish used? Or just Blaze? Spongy, golden-brown bricks were lined up along the table, and their sweet scent mercifully overtook the smells of sweat, spice, and dirt that had been assailing my nostrils. The boy handed Blaze two of the sponges, and Blaze gave him several silver pieces in exchange.

A man behind the stand to my right was barking at me, waving something as if he needed me to take it from him. It was bright and orange, and when I looked closer it looked like Blaze's flint box. All the trinkets at the man's stand looked like Blaze's flint box. Different colors and sizes all dangled from hooks and lined the walls. Cubby could have had any color he wanted. The man grunted again and I reached out to take it, to keep it for when I got Cubby back.

Blaze's hand shot out and grabbed me by the wrist. “No, no. He wants you to buy it.”

“Buy?”

Blaze rolled his eyes and shoved the flint box at the man. “Trade for it,” he told me. He said a couple of words I didn't know, and the man reached down, pulling out a dark colored bag. Blaze turned it over, dumping out some shiny-looking stones. With a nod, Blaze flicked the man another piece of silver.

I saw Av standing in the middle of the street. He was being bombarded by another large Abish man offering him objects that looked a lot like Blaze's pistol.

“Hey, no!” yelled Blaze, Digger still clutching to his back, which left me to be the one to collect Av.

Higher voices screeched around me, strange words flooded the air, and the ache in my head was becoming a pounding pain. The light, the loud noises, the weird smells—I threw my arms around my head, covering my ears and eyes for a second of relief. Suddenly I felt someone pulling on my arms, then tugging at my back. There was a smell, dust and body odor, choking my throat. I opened my eyes and found myself surrounded by several drooping creatures pawing and droning at me in crackly voices. Crevices and lines dragged down their faces, heavy bags and flaps of skin sagged around their eyes and mouths.

The fattest dangled a string of feet that looked like Cavies' in front of my face—bright, vivid colors I'd never seen. I pushed it back from me and reached for my knife but it wasn't there. I cursed. I'd left everything behind at the Pit. Others moved in, grabbing at the air around me, wailing and singing.

I wanted to run, but everywhere I turned another creature had its hands out to grab me. Their circle tightened and I screamed for Av but I couldn't even hear my own voice over the sound of their screeching chants.

“Clear off, you old crones,” said Blaze, reaching through the creatures and pulling me towards him.

I clutched to Blaze as I caught my breath and watched the hideous group disperse.

“You all right, Urgs?” asked Av, jumping as people brushed past him.

“What the Mother were those?” I gasped.

Blaze unclenched my hands from his forearm. “Abish women.”

My heart stopped. As I watched the fat one shaking her string of colorful Cavy-like feet at passersby, I felt my headache pulsating and every image of the Mothers I'd ever thought up warping and changing. In my head, they'd been like us—bigger maybe, nasty and mean too, but still like us. Never had I thought they'd be like this, like some creature from Cubby's nightmares.

I looked up at Blaze; he was smirking. “Old ones, for sure,” he said. “Really old ones. But women just the same.”

“How'd they get like that? Get all”—Digger's face was twisted, he looked in worse shape than me—“all melty?”

Blaze threw back his head and laughed. “Wrinkled? It happens. Live long enough, you'll look like that one day.”

My stomach churned and Av and Digger went white.

“Come on,” said Blaze. He thumped me on the back twice, and reluctantly I followed him deeper into the village.

We hadn't walked far when the crowds of people thinned and the buildings of stone and wood seemed to close in on us. They shaded us from the sun, and now that I wasn't squinting my eyes felt swollen and tired.

“I think we should have a break,” Digger said, sitting down on the side of the road.

Av and Blaze stopped to look at him, but I kept moving.

“No,” I snapped.

“We've been on the move since last night! We can't keep going forever.”

“Rest, then,” I told him, continuing to follow the road through town. I couldn't have been happier to leave him behind.

“He's right,” said Blaze.

I whirled around in time to see him taking a seat beside Digger, who had a maddeningly smug smile on his face.

“I don't have time to stop!” I yelled. “We might be able to catch up to Cubby!”

“Look, Tunrar won't go through this village,” Blaze said, pulling out his pistol. “They've had to go all the way around and enter the Baublenotts from the east, which is tricky. We're making good time, Urgle.”

I scowled but Blaze didn't seem to care; he was filling the pistol with his new fancy stones.

I looked to Av, hoping for some support, but he was watching the road behind us.

“I think someone's coming,” he said.

With a click, Blaze shoved the pistol back into his belt and got to his feet beside Av.

Beyond them I saw a rickety wooden contraption coming up the road, pulled by a large, fat creature with a droopy mouth I didn't recognize.

“What sort of creature is that?” asked Digger, licking his lips like he planned to spear it.

“Sibble Cow,” said Blaze.

A group of children ran along the front and sides of the contraption, more riding on top.

The contraption jingled and rumbled, and the creature, a Sibble Cow, groaned in protest as the children struggled to pull it along the road. They began to wave and squeal, smiling when they saw us. Av couldn't help himself and tried to hold back a chuckle.

“Don't encourage them,” said Blaze. “They'll rob you blind if you let them get too close.”

“What exactly are you worried they'll take?” I said. None of us had left the Pit with anything more than a weapon or two, or nothing at all in my case.

Several of the children, giggling and laughing, ran over,
speaking in more words I couldn't understand. They reached out, pulling at my clothes, inspecting my fingers, grabbing and touching.

Blaze roared at them, and the children screamed and ran after the contraption as it rumbled by.

Only one stayed behind. The child couldn't have been more than six, long sandy-colored hair flowing down to his elbows, his colorful clothes blowing around his knees. I'd never seen a child so clean; he didn't look like a person should.

“A girl?” asked Av quietly.

The child giggled.

“She's wearing a dress,” said Blaze. “She's a girl, all right.”

My body went rigid, and I could feel Av and Digger tense too. A girl. The preferred baby. Someday a Mother. Her big brown eyes sparkled at all three of us, ignoring her companions disappearing in the distance.

She waved a little hand.

None of us moved.

Having got no reaction, she sighed and looked at her feet.

Blaze yelled something at her in words I'd never heard, trying to shoo her away, but she ignored him. She glanced at Digger, then Av as she twirled a strand of hair on her little finger. Then her brown eyes focused on me, and her smile faded.

Uneasy, I looked to Av and Digger, who stood still as stone.

The girl walked right up to me and I moved back. She had her hands out to touch me and I braced myself, as if a single touch would burn.

Her cool little hands grabbed my left one and she opened it up, staring at my palm.

I tried to pull away but she whined and pulled harder.

“What's she doing?” I said, struggling to sound calm.

Blaze rolled his eyes. “She's reading your palm.”

“What?”

Her fingers tickled as she ran them up and down the creases of my hand. Then she gasped and dropped it.

When she looked back at me, her eyes were filled with tears.

She spoke, her melodic voice blurting out a string of strange words. When she realized I couldn't understand she turned to Blaze, urgency drenching every quick little sound.

Blaze scratched the base of his neck, his brow knotted as he listened.

A numbness seeped into my hand. I didn't have the words, but I could read her tone, read Blaze's face. Whatever she'd read on me hadn't been good.

“What's she saying?” Av asked.

“Nothing,” he said. Then he yelled at her in her own tongue, but she screamed over him, begging him to listen.

“She's a crazy Abish girl,” he said. “Fortune-tellers and liars, the whole lot of them.”

Her big brown eyes fixed on me again, and I had the sudden urge to give my hand back to her. Liar, Blaze called her. What did she have to lie about? Blaze scratched nervously at his neck and I wondered who the real liar was. I looked back at the girl. She sighed dramatically, seeing there was nothing more she could say to me, and her frightened expression melted away until she wore the same happy face she had when she'd first waved at us. She shrugged and waved again, then turned and ran off after her friends.

The four of us stood baffled, watching her skip down the road and around a corner.

“But what did she
say
?” asked Digger.

“She said you're ugly,” Blaze snapped.

I looked down at my open palm, trying to see whatever it was she'd seen. Nothing. I couldn't see anything on my skin. In my brain, there was only Cubby.

“We're not resting,” I said.

“No,” agreed Blaze. “We should keep moving.”

The sun's mind-numbing glare had died to a soft orange glow, reminding me of the Hotpots back home.

I traced the lines on my hand as we walked, my mind on Cubby.

An elbow bumped mine and I looked up to see Av walking beside me.

“Are you all right?”

I put my hand down quickly and nodded.

“It hurt?” He gestured to my hand.

“What hurt?”

He grinned. “You should wash it.”

I smiled. Just this morning I would have expected a single touch from a Mother, even a little girl, to burn. It hadn't burned. But still, a feeling lingered on my palm where her fingers had touched me. Maybe Av was right, maybe a rinse would help get rid of it.

“What do you think she told him?” Av asked, nodding to Blaze who walked just a few paces ahead.

“I dunno,” I said. “She looked pretty upset.”

She looked horrified and I had no idea why. How she
could learn anything about me from staring into my palm, I'd never know. But she'd been frightened, that much I understood. By what? Blaze knew. I couldn't stop worrying that it had something to do with Cubby.

“Hey,” said Av, and he smacked my hand where my fingers were probing the lines, “she got over it pretty quick too. You saw her; she was smiling when she left.”

That was true. Liars, Blaze had said. And maybe she had been lying.

The Abish dwellings came to an abrupt stop, the road curving around and leading us back the way we'd come. Beyond it, more rolling green hills.

“Where are we now?” I asked.

Blaze stepped across the curving road and into the thick, tall grass.

“End of town.” He pointed straight into the rolling hills. “Baublenotts are just off that way; we should be there before it gets dark.”

“By Rawley,” breathed Digger from somewhere behind me. He'd been dragging his feet the whole time and had fallen pretty far back. Some leader. He'd been deadweight from the start. “What the Mother is this ugly thing?”

I turned and when my eyes found what he was looking at, I nearly fell backwards.

A monster, a giant hideous yawning monster towered above the village, its hideous gaping mouth silently screaming out into the distant hills. Av steadied me before I could go down.

“It's a Shibotsa,” said Blaze. “Abish superstition. Let's go.”

Its arms reached the sky, crooked skinny things, and as I stared at the claws I could see they were branches. The legs were hidden by the large sheets of flowing, fraying fabric
that clothed the thing, but I could see a small part of its legs poking out the bottom. They were logs.

“They made this thing?” I asked.

Blaze nodded. “It's supposed to be an angry spirit. Keeps trouble away.”

Av lifted the Shibotsa's skirt and inspected what was underneath. “Spirit?”

“Like, I dunno, a monster, I guess.”