Fire Country (4 page)

T
he huts flit away on either side. Two, four, six—turn right.
Thud!

I run smack into someone
who’s moving in the opposite direction. My feet get tangled and I stumble, start to fall backwards, but strong arms grab my thin ones and haul me up, the soles of my moccasins lifting off the ground for a moment ’fore clamping back down. A familiar face stares down at me.

“Where have you been?” Wrapped up in the voice’s tone is a question, a threat, and a punishment, all bundled together in one angry snarl. Without waiting for an answer, my father growls, “Get inside!” His fingers are like pincers, cutting into my
upper arm and beneath my armpit, as he drags me into the hut on the left. His hut. Although I always called the old, beat up tent we used to live in
our
tent
, since moving to the hut, I’ve never referred to it as
our hut.
It’s always been his.

His domain, his palace, his power.

His hut. A king in his castle.

My mom and I are just squatters.

I allow him to pull me inside, ’cause fighting him would just deepen the bruises that I can already feel settling beneath my skin.
You cannot resist!
The phrase pops unrequested into my head. It’s what the leader of the Glassies said to us using some sorta device that magnified his voice like a god’s. At the time, he was only a speck in the distance, his army of fire chariots and strange, pale-skinned warriors stretched out in front of him, but his voice boomed across the sand-blasted desert plains, over the heads of the men defending us, and into the ears of every woman, child and Fire-afflicted man left behind.

You cannot resist!

The phrase fits so well with my current situation that I accidentally snort. It just slips out, a laugh that I try to stop, to cover with my free hand, which just makes it worse, turning it into a…well, a snort. My father stops just in front of the door, whirls on me, his eyes a black void of anger. “Is something funny?” he says between clenched teeth.

I
stare at him, my eyes and mouth wide. When I don’t answer, he says, “You show up well past your curfew, smelling like filth, wetter’n a Soaker, and you think something is
funny
?” His mouth is all screwed up like he wants to spit on me, and I know I’d better break my silence soon or things are only gonna get worse.

“What’s a Soaker?” I ask
’fore I can stop myself. When I see his face redden, I backtrack. “No—I mean, no, sir. I didn’t mean to…I didn’t think…”

He releases my arm and pulls his hand back across his body, preparing to strike. I close my eyes, cringe, wait for the blow to come—

Creeaakkk!

A second passes, then two. I open my eyes to find a woman staring at us from the doorway of the
hut across the way. Tari—last remaining wife of the Head Greynote. Older’n durt—forty years old!—but tougher’n iron. She’d hafta be to handle her husband.

My father glances at Tari, then back at me. His eyes narrow and for a second I think he’ll hit me anyway, but then the tension drops from his arm at the same time as it drops to his side. “Inside. Now,” he says.

Just before pushing through the door, my eyes flick to Tari and I try to convey my thanks in the look I give her, but her expression is neutral and I can’t tell if she gets the message.

As I move inside,
heat radiates off my father. He’s royally grizzed this time—more’n I’ve ever seen before. I wonder if now—in the privacy of our own home—he’ll hit me.

While he closes the door
, I scan the room. Even without looking, I coulda pictured it. Sari, my newest Call-Mother, sits cross-legged on the floor, making something, probably clothing for one of her kids. Her children, Rafi and Fauna, who are my Call-Brother and Call-Sister, sit next to their mother, playing some game—Rocktop or Tugbug or something. There’s an empty chair beyond, where my last Call-Mother used to sit, before a Killer attack two years ago took her and her two children, Jace and Naya. I cried when they died. Father gave me four snappings on my wrist and I shut up; but what he didn’t know is that I continued to cry inside, where it counts the most, in my heart. My mother taught me that.

My mother, who’s at the table cutting something
, fresh prickler probably, looks up when I enter.

“Siena, where in the name of the sun goddess have you been?”
she says, standing and navigating past my father.

Seeing my mother’s worried face, her eyes
every bit as chestnut as mine, free of lines and wrinkles, as if she’s still a Youngling, brings hot tears to my eyes. All the fear of my father’s wrath slips away in an instant, replaced by the desire to act like a Totter, to make myself smaller’n a burrow mouse, to let my mother hold me and sing me soft lullabies. But I know that’s just a child’s dream. My father’s only getting started.

“I was
washing up at the watering hole,” I say, blinking away the tears as quickly as they spring up. She puts her arms around me and pulls my head into her chest, which only makes things worse. I’m choking now, sobbing, and I feel the warmth of a tear from each eye roll down my cheeks. It’s like the memories of all the awful things that happened today have melted away, dripping from my tear ducts.

“You could have washed up here,” she purrs. “We were worried about you.” She pauses, seems to think for a second. “
I
was worried about you.” I understand her change in word choice. My father worried? Not a chance. If I were dragged away by yellow-eyed Killers in the middle of the night, he’d be thinking about what message to give to the rest of the village to prevent panic, not worrying about my wellbeing. I lick my lips, which taste of salt and well-water. It’s like the terrible events of the day are suddenly no more’n pesky springbugs, and I’m able to swat them away using only my mind. All that matters is the fact that my father doesn’t give a blaze about me.

“I’m sorry, Mother,” I say quietly, pushing her away with both hands.

Her dark brows are creased like a V, her lips a tight line.
Don’t
, she mouths.

I ignore her, face my father, whose back is to me. “Want to hear about my day, Father?” I say
, scorpion poison in my tone.

His hands, which are clenched at his side, open, and then close again, making fists so tight that his knuckles are blotched with red and white. His shoulders rise an
d fall with heavy breaths. I don’t know what’s gotten into me, but I just can’t take it anymore. My bones hurt from a day shoveling blaze. My ribs ache in a dozen places, where Hawk kicked me. And my pride? Well, I guess that’s the only thing that ain’t hurt, ’cause I never had any in the first place.

“Let’s see,” I say, tapping my teeth with a finger, “where should I start? With getting punished or getting the blaze kicked out of me by another Youngling?”

“I know
all
about your day,” Father says, turning sharply. Although I can feel the hot rush of anger coursing through my veins, the look on his face—twisted and gnarled, like he’s not thirty-seven, but forty-seven—makes me shrink back. It’s as hot as scorch in our hut, but a shiver runs down my spine. This man is but a shadow of the father I once knew: the father who sat me on his knees and bumped them up and down while I squealed with laughter; the father who smiled bigger’n the desert when I came home from Learning holding the Smooth Stone, awarded to the best Midder student; the father who held my hand and confronted Midder Vena when she struck me in the arm. No, the man standing ’fore me ain’t the man who did any of those things.

He steps forw
ard and I step back, but my spine bangs against the door, sending needles through my ribs. “Do you know how embarrassing today was for me?” he asks. “First I get called out of a Greynote meeting so Teacher Mas can inform me that you’ve been given Shovel Duty for the fourth time this full moon. Then Hawk and his father show up at my door to tell me how you and Circ jumped him and broke his nose. These are not small things, Siena!” His voice is the bellow of a tug, and I have the sudden urge to squeeze my eyes shut and curl up into a ball in the corner.

“I didn’t…we didn’t…”
My voice is the squeak of a burrow mouse, barely audible above the echoes of my father’s accusations.

“You didn’t what?” he spits.

“We were just defending ourselves,” I cry.

“I will not have you lie to me, Youngling!” he roars. “I’m on the verge of becoming the Head Greynote. How do you think it looks when I can’t even control my own daughter? Do you think the people will trust me to lead them?”

His words must sting my cheeks, ’cause I feel them warming up. “But it wasn’t my faul—”

“Excuses! That’s all I ever get from you, Siena.
You think I give you a hard time to be mean?”
Uh…yeah?
“No! I do it because I want you to be safe, to grow up and have a family. You’re less than a year from the Call and you can’t even take responsibility for your own actions. How do you expect to raise a child?”

“Maybe I don’t want a child!” I scream. I slap a hand over my mouth, right away regretting my words. But
the hand is a moment too late ’cause I’ve already said it, have already admitted what most every Youngling girl thinks. And yet, for some reason, saying it is unforgivable.

At first there’s silence, everyone just staring at me, my father’s eyes as big as my mother’s favorite
firepan. His lips open and I dread what he’ll say. As if realizing my apprehension, he pauses, runs his tongue along his upper teeth, drawing out the moment, then finally speaks. “No daughter of mine is above the Law. You
will
learn your duties, one way or the other. If I have to throw you in Confinement, I will. It’s for your own good.”

Confinement?
But that’s for bad people—people who break the Law. “I haven’t done anything wrong,” I say. “You wouldn’t.” I try to say the last bit with as much conviction as I can muster, but even as I speak it I know it’s not true. He would. He’d do anything if he thought it’d help maintain our way of life. Even throw his own daughter in prison.

“Try me,” he says, his eyes penetrating mine like darts. “
Woman, get my snapper.”

His last command is to my mother, who’s frozen as still as a prickler. She’s watching me, her face full of something I can’t identify. A hint of sadness, maybe. But there’s something else, too, something harder, like stone, noticeable only in her eyes, which don’t match up with the rest of her face.
Save me
, I think as hard as I can in her direction.

“My snapper!” my father yells. “Now!”

The steel in her eyes disappears and I know she didn’t hear my silent plea. Hidden beneath her dress, her feet carry her across the room and behind the barrier, where my father spends the night with each of his wives on a rotational basis, although lately I’ve noticed Sari’s there at least two out of every three nights. I know it’s just the way of my people, but seeing my mother get ignored for Sari, who I barely know, grizzes me off more’n anything.

A moment later she reappears, a black swatch of leather dangling from her hand. At one
end is a handle, which wraps around my father’s palm for greater grip, and at the other side it splits into ten strips, each of which comes to a knot intended to add a bit of sting to each snap. The teeth of the snapper my father calls them.

Her eyes on the floor, my mother hands it to
him.

I
n Learning they told us about a time when men and women were gods and goddesses, and lived until they were sixty, seventy, even eighty. Some of the kids even said their parents told them people used to live until they were ninety or, in rare cases, a hundred, which I think is a bunch of tugblaze. I draw the line at a hundred.

But that was all before the rogue god, Meteor, attacked us. Going against the sun and moon goddess, Meteor snuck
by and gave the earth a real beating, fists and feet and head swirling, knocking over mountains and drying up rivers and wiping out most of the tribes. When Teacher told the story, we were riveted to our seats. It was the first time he had all our attention at once. When he got to the part about how the first Heater crawled out of their hiding spots, in caves and deep pits, we cheered and clapped our hands. They were survivors, just like us. We don’t know where the Icers came from, but they musta survived Meteor, too.

Unfortunately, Teacher’s lesson today is much less interesting, all about Laws and duty. A
lthough I hate to admit it, the lashing my father gave me taught me a lesson. Since then I been careful in class. No daydreaming, no problem. I keep my head up, try to focus on what Teacher is saying, and try to ignore the nasty comments directed my way by Hawk and his gang.

The snapper scars’
ll be the worst yet. Worse’n the time I thought it’d be funny to dump a bunch of sand lice under my sister’s pillow. My mother spent three days scrubbing them all out of Skye’s hair. Father wasn’t too happy and gave me what I thought would be the beating of my life. Skye even said she’d never speak to me again, but a quarter full moon later we were best friends again. Until she snuck a handful of dead eight-leggers into my tugtail soup one night. I didn’t even realize it until I crunched one in my mouth. Blech! She got a pretty bad whooping for her little revenge prank, too, but even that one was nothing compared to what my father gave me t’other day. I screamed like a banshee as he snapped the leather again and again, across my back, my legs, even my buttocks. He was whipping it so hard I could hear him grunting with exertion. It’s times like that I wish I had just a bit more meat on my bones for padding. Or maybe some muscle—that woulda helped. Instead, each blow went straight to my bones, penetrating so deep I thought he’d cut me wide open.

I
couldn’t see a searin’ thing ’cause I was bent over, tears and pain and hair in my eyes, but I did hear my mother scream a few times for him to stop; and she musta come at him, ’cause I heard him curse and then there was a crash. Sari’s kids were crying and she was trying to comfort them, but compared to me, they had nothing to cry about.

It still hurts to sit down, but I manage.

Circ and I haven’t talked much. I think he feels embarrassed that he got a beating from Hawk, and I don’t really have anything more to say about it all. I thanked him for helping me with the blaze, and for standing up for me, and that was that. I believe our friendship could survive anything.

Life goes on in the village. Late summer gets closer and closer to winter, skipping autumn altogether this year.

There are a lot of lasts this year. The last winter before I’m child-big, my last year of Learning, the last time my father’ll be able to call me a Youngling. One good thing about next spring’s Call: it’ll mean I can move out of my father’s hut. I just wish I knew who I’d be living with.

Teacher Mas is going on and on about the history of the human race.
Don’t get me wrong, some of it’s interesting stuff, like how people used to live in these big cities, with tall metal structures where everybody went to work, kind of like the Glassies, I guess, ’cept it was all people, not just one group. I’m not in the mood for it today.

I find myself scanning the room, seeing who else is bore
d. Everyone seems interested, ’cept for Hawk and his mates, who are passing something under their legs—I can’t see what. Finally, my eyes settle on Circ. As though he feels my eyes on him, he turns at that moment and smiles. I can’t help but smile back. If I didn’t have him as a friend, I don’t know what I’d do.

I always get scared for
him ’fore a Hunt. The last Hunt of the season is in three days’ time, and already I feel a little jittery, like I’ve got fire ants in my dress or something. In three quarters of a full moon’s time the tug hurds’ll migrate elsewhere, beyond our reach, off to mate and find food for their new calves. Even Younglings are eligible to participate in the Hunt, if they pass the test, that is. Of course, good-at-everything Circ had to go and pass the skills test the moment he turned twelve, and he’s been going with the Hunters ever since. So far he’s been lucky, coming back with nothing worse’n a bruised foot from being trod on or a gash from a tug horn. But I’ve seen men—skilled, capable men—return home with half their head caved in, or missing a limb, or worse.

It would be dangerous enough if the Hunters had only the tugs to contend with
. The problem with tugs though, is that they’re so full of hunger-satisfying meat that they draw all kinds of attention from predators that are much nastier’n the Hunters.

So, as usual, I’m nervous for Circ, and for myself, too, I guess.

Circ looks back at Teacher, but I keep looking at him, and for just a second, I allow myself a brief daydream, a much needed respite from the real world I live in. What if, in a different world, in a different time, he was my Call? He’s the only one under the watchful eye of the sun goddess who really knows me. Would all my problems go away? Would I be just Siena, not Youngling or Scrawny or Tent-Pole? As I gaze at the face of the only person who seems to know exactly what I need and when I need it, I can almost picture what it’d be like. I mean, forget about all the stuff about going to bed with him—he’s my friend and I’m no shilt, so I’d rather not think about that—but the rest’d be amazing, right? Waking up and making breakfast with him; playing games with our children; spending the day together, at least when he doesn’t hafta go off for another Hunt. A beautiful dream, but then, of course, there’d be another Call, another wife, Call-Children. I know, I know, that’s just the way it is, but it’d still suck having to share him.

Like my mother’s always had to do with my father. Although nowadays I don’t think she has any problem sharing, considering how hard he’s become, I hated watching before, when she used to laugh, laugh, laugh at things he’d say. And then he’d go off to bed with one of his other Calls and I could see the hurt in my mother’s eyes. I hurt for her, wish there was another way.

Breeders
.

The word pops into my head like a burrow mouse from its hole. Lara’s word, not mine. But it’s true, ain’t it? Naw, I can’t think like that—not when it’s only months ’fore my Call.

Something thuds against my shin. I cringe and almost hiss out
Ouch!
’fore I catch myself and remember where I am. I glance at Circ, who’s shaking his head. He’s the one who kicked me. I don’t know how much time has passed while I was lost in my thoughts, but all t’other Younglings are standing up and leaving our open air Learning hut.

“Try to focus, Siena,” Circ says. “I know it’s hard, but I don’t think either of us want
s Blaze Craze again, nor face the wrath of our fathers.” By
the wrath of our fathers
he means the wrath of
my
father. He got away with a warning and a secret pat on the back for standing up to three Younglings at the same time, while I got the beating of my life.

I realize Circ’s asked me a question, but I didn’t hear it, just see his face full of expectation. “Huh?” I say.

“Are you daydreaming about daydreaming now?” he says.

“Was that the original question or a new one?” I ask, trying to keep a straight face but failing miserably.

Circ laughs and it’s like we’re not Younglings on the verge of major changes in our lives. We’re new Younglings again, or maybe Midders, with not a care in the world. Life is fun and I ain’t scared of my father and the future holds more possibilities’n living with strangers, a flock of children in tow.

“It was a new question. I asked what you were thinking about when I
snapped
you out of it,” he says.

“Ugh. Don’t say that wor
d. Just hearing it makes my flesh hurt,” I say, reaching a hand over my shoulder to gingerly touch my back. Even through the dress my skin feels raw, like someone’s rubbed it with sand, or maybe rope.

“
It’s not right the way he beats on you,” he says.

“Like you’ve never been snapped,” I say.

“Not like you,” he says, shaking his head. “A few snaps to the wrist and Father’s done. He says it hurts him worse than it hurts us, and I believe him, too. But your father…” He trails off, looking away.

“He likes it as much as I hate it?” I offer.

“Something like that,” Circ says.

“Don’t worry about it. I can handle him. And s
aying something to someone’ll just make it worse.”

Circ l
ooks at me for a long moment, then changes the subject. “Honestly, though, you did look like you had gone far, far away. You were smiling at first, but then frowning.”

I scowl at
him. “Must you read my expressions when I’m daydreaming?” I say.

“I must,” Circ says, laughing again. “But you’re dodging the question. What were you thinking
about?”

There’s heat on my cheeks. “I was just…” My mind races to come up with something. But I don’t lie to Circ—never have, never will—and my mind knows it, so it just goes blank.

“Were just what?” he persists. I wish he’d drop it, but that’s not the way our friendship works.

I look around. We’re alone now—everyone’s left, even Teacher M
as. “I was thinking what it’d be like if you were my Call.” Dropping my head, I study my feet, noticing how small they look from up here.

“That’s not—”

“Hey, Siena!” a voice shouts from the entrance. I turn to see Lara poking her head in. Across the room and out of the glare of the afternoon sun, she really looks like a boy.

“What?” I say, glancing at Circ, who looks surprised that someone else is talking to me.

“Have you thought about what I said to you the other day?” Lara says.

I wince, not because I haven’t, but because I have.

“I’ll see you at the game,” I say to Circ. To Lara, I say, “Walk with me.”

~~~

I avoid her question all the way to the feetball match. She prods and pokes and rephrases it a dozen different ways, but I just keep changing the subject. At the game, I’m doing the same, studying the match like it’s a strange ten-legged insect with a red tail.

Feet
ball. Yet another activity I’ve never been good at. Trying to run around while simultaneously kicking and throwing and catching a ball? Well, let’s just say it’s about three too many things for my two left feet to handle at once. Not to mention the hordes of defenders trying to do everything in their power to grind you into the unforgiving desert floor. Yeah, violent sports and me don’t mix. Scorch, any sport and me don’t mix.

I played when I had to as part of the physical activity required during Learning, but never for fun. Thankfully, as a fifteen-year-old female Youngling—also known as a pre-Bearer—I’m exempt from any physical activity that might prevent me from having children in the near future.
Which means I get to watch Circ play, which is like watching Greynote Giza paint one of his famous paintings: fluid and natural and graceful. The score is tied and it’s already in extra time, which means the next goal’ll be the decider.

I’m sitting next to Lara,
’cause, well, ’cause I don’t really have many friends at the moment. I don’t know if she’s my friend exactly, but at least she’s not an enemy, and she’s never called me any of the not-so-flattering nicknames that I’m used to. So she’s okay in my book. Although she is starting to freak me out with all of her cryptic messages.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” she says
, asking for the fourteenth time since the match started.

Circ takes a pass off his left foot and quickly dart
s past a defender who tries, and fails, to grab him. His movements are faster’n the lightning we get during the winter storms, but not nearly as shocking. So far he’s doing nothing I haven’t seen him do ’fore. He has three goals and a dozen steals, far more’n any other player.

“I’m trying to watch—”

“Oh, come on. I could see in your eyes that you were intrigued by what I said. That a life of breeding and childrearing and waiting on your Call hand and foot doesn’t exactly excite you.”

“Shhh, keep it down,” I hiss, glaring at her. She mig
ht not hate me like most of t’other Younglings, but if she keeps talking like this, using that dirty word—
breeding
, shh!—she
is
gonna get me in trouble. Again. I’m pretty sure my father’s threat to chuck me in Confinement is a load of tugwash, but I’m not itching to test him. Especially not so soon after the last time.

“Sorry,” she whispers, rolling her eyes.

“Look,” I say, as I watch Circ dodge another defender by flicking the ball in the air with his feet, running around them, and then catching it in one hand. “Even if I agreed with you, about the…”