Ice Country (13 page)

He heads straight for the palace gate and we
follow. Before the gate, he says, “I’ll take it from here.”

“I’ll help you get them to bed,” I say.

“Not a chance,” Abe says. “They won’t let
anyone in but me. Take a hike.”

Going home is the last thing I want to do.
Thoughts of charging through the gates, fighting off sword- and
bow-wielding guards with my bare fists, barging my way into the
king’s quarters, knocking him senseless, and taking my sister back
cycle through my head.

Then I turn and walk away, Buff by my
side.

Over my shoulder, Abe’s voice carries on the
wind. “Remember, don’t tell anyone what you saw tonight. Yer bein’
watched. Always.”

K
nowing and not
being able to do anything is almost worse than not knowing at
all.

Every day Buff and I think up a dozen
hare-brained plans to infiltrate the palace and rescue Joles and
all the other kids, Heaters and Icers alike, but every day we shoot
so many holes in our ideas that they cross the line from impossible
to no-way-in-chill-buddy.

At night I literally pull my hair out trying
to bully my brain into being smarter. In the morning I find strands
of black on my pillow. I want to tell Wes everything, but I’m
afraid they’ll know if I do, and then I’ll end up like Nebo. And
because Wes’ll know, he’ll have to be taken out too.

It’s a problem without a solution. The only
thing I have going for me is the job, which at least allows me to
see what’s going on at the border, what the king is up to. But
then, one day, the Heaters don’t show up.

“Whaddya make of it?” Brock says, cracking
his knuckles and staring off into fire country. It’s a question,
but I guess not one that’s against the rules.

Abe scratches his chin. “They were s’posed to
have supplies for us today. Something musta happened.”

“Like what?” Buff says.

“Who knows?” Abe says, grabbing a handful of
sand and letting it drift through his fingertips. It’s hotter down
here than I’ve ever felt before in my life, like sitting in a
roaring fire. Even the light breeze is full of heat. Not even a
wisp of a yellow cloud mars the great red sky. And the sun? Chill!
It feels so close and big I have to shield my eyes with my
hand.

I remember everything Roan said the night he
failed to deliver the next batch of children. Shiv about being
attacked from all sides, by something called Killers, and the
pasty-skinned Glassies, and something about the Wildes stealing
their girls, or some such rot. When all the time he’s been giving
away his children to King Goff anyway, so who is he to complain?
Whatever the case, though, something’s gone wrong, which means we
have no choice but to trudge back up the mountain empty handed.

At the palace gates, I say, “I want to be the
one to deliver the news to Goff.”

“Forget it,” Abe says.

Feeling restless and tired, I say, “Try to
stop me,” and march right for the gates, which start to open to let
Abe in.

Abe grabs at my arm, but I shrug it off. He
makes another grab, so I turn and push him, hard enough to get him
to back off, but not as hard as the last time. To my surprise, he
raises his hands in peace and lets me go.

“Don’t do anything stupid, kid,” he says.

Surprisingly, Brock and Hightower just watch
me go, as if I’m their entertainment for the day. I reach the
gates, which stretch higher than ten men on each other’s shoulders,
an arched entranceway that’s normally barred by a heavy metal gate
that’s cranked open from below. The gate’s more than halfway up
now.

Two burly guards block my path, heavy
battleaxes in their hands, crisscrossed between them. “I’m here to
see the king in place of Abe,” I say, hard-like, as if I really
belong there.

“Those are not our orders,” Burly Guard A
says.

“Turn around and keep on walking,” says Burly
Guard B.

An important decision. To fight or not to
fight? Why is it that I constantly have to make this decision over
and over again? My standard answer used to be to fight, which I
preferred, but now it’s like my brain’s taken over everything, and
I don’t know up from down. If I fight a couple of palace guards,
maybe I break through, get as far as the next group of guards, but
eventually I get stopped. Lose my job if I’m lucky; get dead or
chucked in prison if I’m not.

But Jolie’s in there! Argh! I know where my
sister is—or at least I’m pretty icin’ sure—and yet I can’t do a
freezin’ thing about it.

“I said, move on,” Burly Guard B says. Or is
it A? I can’t remember, but all I know is I’ve been standing there
for way too long, drawing all kinds of attention from the wall
guards, who are peeking over the edge at me, bows steady, arrow
nocked and ready to fly.

Not fight.

The decision burns me up inside like I ate
something rancy. It’s not a natural decision for me, but I know
it’s the right one.

I walk away, expecting the guards to grab me
and pull me inside at any second, to do to me what they did to
Nebo.

But they don’t, leaving me wondering why I
seem to be able to get away with so much more than everyone
else.

~~~

Something’s gone down in fire country. Rumors
are flying around like snowflakes in a winter’s snowstorm. Or even
like a summer snowstorm, like the one we’ve got now.

It’s the warmest part of the year, but you
wouldn’t know by looking out your window at the blanket of cold
white coating everything, and the blurry, snowflake-filled air.

Buff and I are camped out at my place, riding
out the storm, drinking warm ’quiddy and speaking in hushed tones.
I don’t know why we’re whispering, because Wes has gone out, still
looking for a job, even in a snowstorm, and Mother, well, she’s
even more gone, although she’s sitting not two steps away.

“People are saying the Heaters have been
destroyed,” Buff says.

I shake my head. “There’s no way…” I say,
although I know anything’s possible around here. Like selling kids
for cures.

“It would mean…”

“No job,” I finish.

“We were so close,” Buff says, groaning.

“Who gives a shiv about that,” I say. “Yo’ll
probably let the last two payments go anyway.” From what we were
able to save, we handed a whole bundle of silver over to Yo, nearly
paying for the damage we caused in the fight.

“You think?” Buff says optimistically.

“Yah, but like I said, who cares?” I regret
saying it right away, because I see the hurt in Buff’s eyes. “Look,
I know Fro-Yo’s is like home to you—it is to me too—but I’m just
worried about how I’ll ever get Jolie back without that job. It was
my only connection to the palace.”

“We’ll find a way,” Buff says.

I shake my head. “I don’t see how.”

“We’ll start by going to the border.”

~~~

So that’s what we do. Every day, we wake up,
grab our nice, shiny King-provided sliders, and slide/hike our way
down to the borderlands, hoping to see something, to get some news
of the Heaters. Why? Because if we can be the ones to bring news of
what’s happened in fire country to Goff, maybe he’ll agree to see
us.

And if I can just get behind those palace
walls…

Then what? I break out dozens, maybe hundreds
of children?

That’s the plan.

The first few days we see nothing at the
border. Just empty flatlands, hotter than chill, stretching off in
the distance farther than the human eye can see. So we venture a
little further in. Each day, we go a little farther. We strip off
clothes as we go, until we’re down to nothing but our skivvies.

And yet it’s still hot. Amazing! I still
don’t get how it can be so cold and full of snow up the mountain,
and fire-hot down here, in the desert. To my smallish brain, it
don’t make no logical sense.

One day, when we’re trudging back into ice
country after a long morning in the desert, I see something. A
flash of movement in the trees. There and then gone. A bird maybe?
Or a rabbit? I don’t know why, but it felt bigger than that. Not
bear-size, but much bigger than some woodland critter.

I stick a hand out to stop Buff. We’re both
wearing just our skivvies, having left our clothes hanging on a
tree branch a little further into the woods. He raises an eyebrow
questioningly, opens his lips to speak, but I raise a finger to my
mouth, quieting him. I point in the direction I saw the
movement.

There it is again, something creeping amongst
the creepers. But whatever it is, it’s almost blending in with the
brown of the tree trunks, the earthy colors of the forest. Barely
discernible, unless you happen to be looking right at it.

A twig snaps.

I charge toward the sound, feeling Buff right
behind me. If it’s a Heater, I gotta catch him, make him talk to me
about what’s going on in fire country. This might be my only
chance.

I barge through a tangled thicket, getting
scraped and poked by a half-dozen jaggedy branches, barely noticing
the flashes of red on my skin.

More twigs are snapping in front of me, as my
quarry realizes he’s being chased, and has chosen haste over
stealth. I follow the sound, grabbing tree trunks and swinging
around them to increase my momentum. I can see him now, definitely
a Heater, wearing brown skins that cover his arms and legs, as if
he’s expecting it to get cold real soon. He’s fast too, cutting
amongst the trees and bushes like a deer.

But he don’t got nothing on me. I grew up in
the forest, I know how it moves, how it breathes, where to expect
the roots to jump out at you.

I close in.

His head bobs, his short dark hair ducking
around trees, picking a path through the forest.

Almost close enough to grab.

I’m about to dive when—

He whirls around, stopping so quickly I
almost bash into him. Except…

The him’s a
her
.

I look the Heater woman over from head to toe
in an instant, and I can’t stop my eyes from stopping on her chest,
which pushes her coat outward in a feminine curve. “You’ve got…but
those are…I thought you were…” I say eloquently.

She looks at me with dark, mesmerizing eyes,
her lips turned up in a fierce grin. “Yeah, and I got one of these
too.” Before I have a chance to even think about ducking, she decks
me in the head with a fist that I swear is made of stone.

My last thought before my vision goes black:
she hits harder than me
.

I
wake up beaten by
a girl. But she was a Heater, so I don’t mind so much. I don’t even
mind the headache, which pounds like an angry drummer on my
skull.

A leaf rests on my lips, which I blow
off.

Wow!
I think. Who was that? A Heater,
obviously. But ice, was she ever—

“Urrrr,” someone moans nearby.

“Buff?” I say.

“Yah.”

“You breathin’?” I ask, sitting up, holding
my head to stop the forest from spinning.

“Nay,” Buff says, lying flat on his back next
to a large tree.

“What happened to you?” I ask, wondering if
the Heater girl took him down too. I’m kind of hoping she did,
because that would be even more impressive. I mean, we’re not the
best fighters in the world or anything, but I like to think we’re
better than most. Although that might just be my pride talking.

“Not sure,” Buff says, trying to lift his
head up, but thinking better of it and resting it back on the
ground. He looks funny wearing just his underwear.

“Was it the girl?” I ask.

“Girl?” Buff says. “What girl?” He’s speaking
to the tops of the trees.

I drag myself over to him, so I can see his
face. There’s dried blood in a line from his split lip to his chin,
and one of his eyes is purple and puffy. I wonder how it compares
to my face.

“You look like chill,” I say.

“What girl?” Buff repeats.

“The one I was chasing. I thought she was a
guy, but then she turned, all short-haired and fierce. That’s when
she hit me.”

“You got hit by a girl?” Buff says
incredulously.

“Not hit, Buff. Knocked out. She hits harder
than you do!”

Buff looks at me with the one eye he’s able
to open. Then he starts to laugh. “You got beat up by
a
girl
?”

I shake my head. “She’s probably the one who
got you, too. She’s crazy-tough. Unlike any Icer woman, that much I
can tell you.”

“She’s not the one who got me,” Buff says,
squinting his one eye, like he’s trying to remember something. “I
was right on your tail, doing my iciest to keep up with the manic
pace you were plowing through the woods, when something dark
dropped from over my head, leaping from the trees. This wasn’t no
girl, Dazz, no one so easy to beat as that.”

“She wasn’t
easy to beat
,” I
interrupt.

He shakes his head again. “Anyway, this was
definitely a guy, but not like the Heaters we’ve seen. He was cut
like stone, brown-skinned, but covered in dark markings, like some
kind of wild man. He was shirtless, but had a mess of skins over
his shoulder. And he hit harder than some sissy-eyed Heater girl.
He knocked me flat into tomorrow with a left and a right.”

“Two hits?” I say. “Like I said, the
sissy-eyed Heater girl knocked me out with one punch.”

“I guess I can just take a hit better than
you,” Buff says, laughing. But then he grabs his head like he just
got hit by an iceball.

I sigh. “We can argue about it later. What do
you think they’re doing here in ice country?”

“How the chill should I know? They’re
supposed to be destroyed.”

“Maybe most of them are,” I say. “Maybe
they’re coming here looking for help, someone to take them in.”