Fire Country (22 page)

“Do you think Skye’s alive?” I ask.

She stops with her needle and thread, turns her tired eyes to me. “Does she feel dead?” she asks, pointing to her heart.

“I—I don’
t know. I never really thought ’bout it that way. I guess…” I think ’bout Skye, ’bout her raven-black hair, ’bout her contagious laugh, ’bout how she was everything I’m not. Popular, coordinated, pretty. There’s no sadness for her in my heart. No. She doesn’t feel dead.

I shake my head.

“Well there’s your answer,” she says matter of factly.

“But Circ doesn’t feel dead either,” I say, feeling my heart crumble even as I say it.

“Siena,” she says, putting down the britches. “You can’t do this to yourself. Do you see him sometimes?”

I nod. I see him in everything. But I can’t tell her that. Instead I say, “Sometimes.”

She curls an arm around me, pulls me in. “I still see my first love, too,” she whispers. “Sometimes.”

My head jerks, eyes widen. “Yo
u mean, there was someone else ’sides Father?”

She laughs and it reminds me of Skye. They were always a lot alike. “Your father is my Call.” She drops
her voice even further, looks ’round as if the hut walls might be listening. “Brev was my true love.”

I straighten up, all my attention on my mother and this surprising revelation. “Who was he?”

She stares at me wistfully and I can tell she’s looking right through me. “The son of a Greynote. Kind eyes, bluer than the winter rains. Soft hands, but strong, too. Oh, I remember spending too much time kissing him behind the border tents.”

“Mother!” I exclaim, shocked. “But that’s where the shilts go.”

Her grin makes me grin, too. “I wasn’t shilty, Siena. I only ever went there with Brev. Besides, people doing what makes them happy ain’t shilty.” It’s funny hearing her saying that ’cause it’s what I’m always thinking.

The door slams and Father clomps in. My head is spinning
, both ’cause of Brev and how she just said
ain’t
, which I ain’t never heard her say. In less time’n it takes for a vulture to swallow a burrow mouse I’ve learned so much ’bout my mother, more’n I ever knew ’fore. I desperately wanna ask her what happened to him, where he is now, whether she ever sees him, but now Father’s here, scowling at us like we’ve just spit on his moccasins.

“You’ve got Call Class,” he says gruffly.

I stand up, meet my mother’s eyes for an instant, share our secrets without words, desperately wanting to ask her more. Smiling, I follow my mother’s Call outside.

~~~

Call Class. Our chance to ask questions. And we got plenty.

There are ’
bout thirty of us. Me, Lara, and a bunch of others who’ve never really tried to talk to me. The Teacher, a squat woman with laser-sharp eyes, is whacking away the questions with an ease that can only come with experience. She must teach Call Class a lot.

“Can I choose my Call, because there’s this guy…?” one girl asks, twirling her hair with one finger. Everyone knows the answer to that question, so it makes half the class crack up. I just stare straight ahead.

Teacher sighs, but answers anyway. “All Calls are at random. An eligible Pre-Bearer’s name is selected and then an eligible male name is selected. Listen, Younglings, because this is important. You do not get to choose your Call because it doesn’t matter who it is. All that matters is that you Bear children and help our tribe survive. That’s it.”

“What do I do if I don’t like my Call?” a whiny girl asks
, apparently not getting Teacher’s message.

“Deal with it,” says Teacher. “Next.”

“How do I know if I’m satisfying my Call?” asks one of the shiltier girls, grinning slyly. “You know, when I lay with him.” She’s only asking what everyone’s thinking.

“I’m sure you know the answer to that already,” Teacher says, unblinking. A few Pre-Bearers giggle and the shilty girl blushes and ducks her head. “Next.”

“What if I miss my Call?” a familiar voice asks from beside me. My heart stops. Every head in the room turns to look at Lara. And ’cause I’m sitting next to her, they look at me too. Guilty by association. There’s a speck of durt on one of my feet and I’m determined to stare it away.

“No one misses their Call,” Teacher answers, as if it’s a perfectly valid question. “Next.” I can still feel the eyes on us, but then one by one, they turn back to face the front.

“Why’d you ask that?” I hiss.

“Just for fun,” Lara says, grinning.

“You got a funny way of having fun.”

“Now it’s your turn,” she says, winking.

I raise an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“Ask a question. A real question. Not something that she’s heard a million times, that she expects you to ask. Something else. Try to rattle her. For fun.”

I shake my head. “You’re wooloo,” I say, but immediately start thinking about what question’ll surprise the unflappable Teacher.

Another girl asks, “Do I have to have a Call-Sister?”

Stupid girl
, I think. This is stuff we’ve been learning for years. Teacher sighs, but responds, her voice monotone and rehearsed. “A Call-Family is comprised of a man and his three Calls, who Bear his children. Every three years, each Call-Mother is required to become big with child and Bear a new child. They take turns until the family has grown to its maximum sustainable size, which includes three children per Call-Mother, or nine children total. It’s at this time only that it will be considered a Full-Family and Bearing shall cease. Next.”

The question pops into my mind like most of my random thoughts do. Quickly and vividly. Circ’s bloody face wet with tears. His body, still stronger’n most, weakened by injury and blood loss. His voice, urgent and stronger’n expected as he gives me his charm. My charm now. My fingers play on the
pointer charm dangling from my bracelet. The question comes out. “What if my Call is dead?” I murmur, almost to myself. The question is rude, uncouth, and inappropriate in a lot of ways. There’s a good chance I’ll go to Scorch just for asking it.

“Excuse me?” Teacher says.

Lara is tapping her foot with excitement next to me.

“What if my Call is dead?” I say again, louder this time.

Teacher’s eyes narrow. “I’m not sure what you’re playing at, Youngling, but what you ask is impossible. You haven’t received a Call yet, so he can’t be dead.”

I chose him and he chose me. It’s what I want to s
ay, but I know how it’ll sound. Like I’m just some lovestruck Youngling. The other girls’ll laugh and Teacher’ll come down hard on me. Not today. “Thank you, Teacher,” I say.

Lara giggles.

T
he Call. Those two words pierce my skull the moment I open my eyes and am blinded by a bright sliver of sunlight. No going back.

I peer out the window, surprised to see the deep red, cloudless sky
, and brilliant orange sun emerging from the horizon. It’s been raining for two days straight, which is normal for this time of year, but for some reason it’s decided to stop for such an important moment in my life.

There’s a shout from outsid
e, but I roll over, pull my tugskin blanket over my ears. It’s the last morning I’ll wake up alone. At least until I hafta share my Call with my first Call-Sister. Or perhaps I’ll be the first Call-Sister for someone else, which means I’ll hafta share my Call right away. That wouldn’t be so bad, not with a guy who’s not Circ. Less pressure on me that way.

The door explodes open and I hear heavy boots stomp across the floor. Father. No one else can walk so angrily. “Siena, pretending to sleep won’t work. You’re going to tell me what you know about Lara
immediately.”

Lara?
Since when does my father even know who Lara is? He’s never said a word ’bout her ’fore. Oh sun goddess! I think. He’s found out ’bout the things she’s been saying to me. About there being another way. ’Bout missing the Call. ’Bout the Wilds.

I roll over, feign ignorance. “Who’s Lara?” I ask. He grabs me by the arm, his fingers pressing hard into my skin. “Oww! Father, it’s my Call today. Please.”

That works and he let’s go, backs up a step. “Don’t play dumb with me, Youngling,” he barks.

“I’m not a Youngling anymore!” I shout, h
oping that matching his anger’ll get rid of him.

“You are until tonight,” he retorts. “Lara’s missing, and I want to know exactly what you know about it.”

~~~

I’m still in shock over the whole thing. Lara’s missing? What? It’s crazy. All this time I thought she was full of hot air, all talk, overcompensating for a future she couldn’t control. But now she’s on the verge of doing exactly what she said she’d do fo
r many full moons: miss the Call. And she’s not the only one missing. There’re a bunch of other Pre-Bearers gone, too.

I didn’t tell my father a searin’ thing. Well, actually, I did, but none of it had a lick of truth. I told him she’s been trying to make friends with me, always bothering me, telling me wooloo things.
Well, day ’fore last, she told me she was fixing to run off to ice country just ’fore her Call. Father, I swear I thought it was a bunch of tugblaze or I woulda told you. Please believe me, Father, please!

He bought the whole thing, which is why I’m smiling now. He wasn’t too happy that I hadn’t told him earlier, but he didn’t give me too much trouble over it
’cause I was so cut up about the whole thing. I don’t really know what happened to her, but she seemed to think the Wilds would kidnap her, and maybe that’s exactly what happened. Just like with Skye.

So I’m smiling and humming along to myself as I walk back from my last session of Call Class. I mightn’t be able to get out of it, but I’m glad Lara did. When I reach our hut, my smile vanishes.

There’s one scorch of a commotion outside of our place. A huddle of Greynotes speak in hushed tones. MedMa has his arm on my father’s shoulder and is shaking his head and speaking softly. I ignore them all, push past, make my way to the door.

My father sees me. “Siena, don’t,” he says, but I ignore him, fling open the door.

Evidence of the Fire is everywhere. It’s in the wet towels in the wash basin, in the lingering scent of MedMa’s healing herbs, in the abject silence that seems to surround the room. And ’specially on my mother’s face, which is sheened with sweat, red and white and yellow, sharpened with pain. Her expression is contorted even now, as she tries to smile at me and sit up in bed. “Siena,” she murmurs, her loudest voice but a whisper.

“No, Mother. No.” Tears well up. I won’t go to her. Can’t. If I do it’ll make it real. The Fire. Come into our home to take the last person I have.

“Shhh,” she whispers. “Come to me.”

“No…no.”
Tears in streaks on my cheeks. Numbness all over. Where are you, sun goddess?

“It’s going to be fine,” my m
other says, a stronger woman’n I’ll ever be.

I keep my distance even though I know the Fire ain’t catching. “Nothing’s fine,” I say.

A shadow splashes me from behind. I don’t turn ’round. “Leave us, Roan,” my mother commands. For once in his life, my father obeys my mother, closes the door softly.

“I
can’t do this,” I say, talking ’bout my mother and the Call in one breath.

“You can,” she says, extending an arm. An invitation.

Although I don’t wanna, I move closer. Closer. Sit on the edge of the bed. Hold her hand, which doesn’t hold back. There’s already no strength left in it. “So fast,” I say, watching a tear drip off my chin and onto her arm.

“I’ve felt it coming for a while now,” she says. “But yes, this Fire is faster than most. Mercifully fast.”

“But I’m not ready.” Once more I’m talking ’bout her and the Call. Funny how those two things seem so inexplicably linked now, when ’fore they were nothing alike.

She laughs but it comes out as a cough. I calm her with a hand on her forehead. The heat is pouring out of
her skin like there really is
fire
in there. There is, I remember. The Fire to end all fires.

I leave her
side for a moment, ring out a wet towel in the wash basin, return to her. Dab her face with the towel, wiping away the tears that’ve begun to spring up. “I’ve never done right by you, Siena,” she says, sadness in her eyes.

“No, Mother, don’t say that. You’ve done right by me. Life is just hard sometimes. Father is hard.”

“No excuse,” she says. “I’m going to make it right before I go. I have to make it right.”

“You don’t hafta
do anything,” I say. “Just rest, Mother. Just rest.”

~~~

Jade. Skye. Circ. Lara, earlier today. And now my mother, soon to follow, maybe as soon as three or four days ’cause of how fast-acting her Fire is. It feels like everyone that matters to me is gone. Taken for reasons I don’t think I’ll ever understand.

It’s time. Like my sister did not so long ago, I put on my white dre
ss. There’s no one to help me ’cause Sari hates me and mother’s too tired to stand. She watches though, her eyes keen with interest. “You look beautiful,” she says when I finish.

“Skye was more beautiful,” I remember.

“In my eyes, you two will always be the prettiest girls in all of fire country,” she says.

I cast my eyes downward. “Will you be able to come to the Call?” I ask, already knowing her answer.

“Siena, I’m too weak. Far too weak. But I’ll be there in here.” She points to her heart. “And here,” she adds, pointing to my hair. I frown in confusion. “In your hair, silly. I want to fix your hair just right.”

Tears bubble up but I blink them away.
I sit on the ground, not caring if my dress gets durty. It’s the only way my mother’ll be able to reach me.

She hasn’t braided my hair in years, but as soon as her fingers slide along my scalp the memories come flooding back. My sister and me sitting side by side as my mother worked on our hair, poking at each other and giggling. Her expert
fingers feel the same now, where I can’t see them, almost as if there’s nothing wrong with her at all. As if nothing’s changed.

The only noticeable difference is the speed at which she works, but I don’t know if her slowness
is ’cause of the Fire or ’cause she, like me, don’t want this moment to end.

But we both know it hasta
.

It hasta.

I try to pull our time together out, stretch it, lengthen it, using the only thing I got. A request. “Tell me more ’bout Brev,” I say.

My mother doesn’t say nothing for a lon
g moment, and I know I surprised her, ’cause her fingers stop working. “What do you want to know?” she asks.

“Everything,” I say and she laughs.

“Now that’ll take more time’n we have,” she says.

“Is that a promise?”

She laughs again and I’m glad. Glad ’cause the Fire ain’t taken her laugh away. Not yet. “I’ll tell you this,” she says, and I lean back against her bed, closing my eyes, trying to picture her at my age. Try as I might, I can’t do it. “We were inseparable. We went everywhere and did everything together.”

Like me and Circ, I think.
“What happened?” I ask.

“The Call,” she says and I open my eyes to my future, sitting out
in the center of the village, eyes like fire, staring, just staring. I close them again. “We couldn’t be together after that. Sun goddess knows we wanted to, but it wasn’t right—not by the Law anyway. Your father…he was a good man for a good long while.”

But I don’t wanna talk ’
bout my father—after all, I was there when he started changing—so I ask another question. “Where’s Brev now?”

I can’t see it, but I can feel my mother’s smile, in her fingers, which seem to quicken, working over my strands of hair a beat or two faster.
“Somewhere,” she says, but that ain’t no answer.

“Where’s
somewhere
?”

“He couldn’t stand it. Neither of us could. I didn’t have any choice really, but to stay with your father. Skye was on the way already. I was making a family out of nothing. Brev left.”

Left?
“But there’s nowhere to go,” I say, feeling around with my words, trying to work it out. Ice country? The Icers’d never take a Heater on. The Wildes? Far as I know, they’re all women and they were only started a few years back. That leaves…

“He started the Marked
and I never saw him again,” my mother says and I blink, stunned for a moment.

She finishes with my hair
, and I absently feel ’round with my hands. Even without gazing into the reflections of the watering hole I know she’s done a beautiful job. Several short braids curl delicately ’round my head like a crown, woven so tightly they’re like rope. A longer braid falls down the center of my back. Even without the memory that graces my mind at that moment, I’d know it’s the same hairstyle she created for my sister just ’fore the Wilds took her.

But I can’t think about any of that. ’Cause her true love
created the Marked.

There’s a knock at the door. The Call. Will I answer?

“Go,” my mother says. “You can tell me all about it tomorrow.”

I squeeze her hand ’
fore I go, saying
And you can tell me ’bout Brev and the Marked
.

~~~

My feet are heavier’n tug. The march to my Call is full of blazing torchlight marking the way, casting dancing and wriggling shadows along the pathway.

Sari
refused to escort me which is fine by me. My father can’t ’cause he’s overseeing the proceedings and is already there. That means I have no family willing or able to walk with me. It’s so different’n my sister’s Call, where me and my mother walked with her the whole way—or at least until the point where the Wilds found a way to grab her.

So that leaves Veeva. Sun goddess
, bless Veeva. I don’t know what I’d do without her.

She’s gripping my hand and talking a mile a
moment ’bout how proud she is of me and how whoever ends up with me is a lucky baggard. I smile and thank her, but inside I’m quaking like I’m staring down the throat of a hungry Killer. And all that keeps thrumming through my head is:

I’m not ready, I’m not ready, not ready, not ready.

In my heart I know the truth: I’ll never really be ready. Maybe once upon a time I coulda been ready, back when things were simpler, when Circ was alive, when my father wasn’t Head Greynote, when my mother wasn’t dying…

But not now. Now t
hings are so messed up I wanna shake off Veeva’s hand, break through the line of Greynotes that are supervising the Call, and run, run, run until my feet fail me and I can’t run any more. I could run to Confinement, break the prisoners out, tell everyone what’s really happening up there. That’s what I’d do if I was brave-Siena, the girl who tried to save Circ. But she died along with him, leaving just me.

We reach the Call so much faster’n I expec
ted we would. My stomach drops ’bout to my feet, like I jumped off something high.

Not ready.

At least half the village is gathered in the center of town, where the bonfire’s been churned up to a roaring inferno. Extra seats’ve been rolled in—shaved tree trunks and boulders mostly—to accommodate all the Greynotes. My father’s atop the largest boulder, presiding over the whole thing. His eyes meet mine and a rare smile plays on his lips. This is all he’s ever wanted. A daughter of his to make him proud. To Bear. Fulfill a duty, replenish the tribe and all of that blaze. I look away from him.