The Earth Dwellers (2 page)

“No.” Tristan again, but there’s less conviction in his voice now. This girl’s out of her mind, about two pebbles short of a cave-in. She won’t listen no matter what we say. She’s convinced we’re these “Glassies.” Whoever they are, they must be her enemies.

For the first time, I’m thankful Tristan and I thought to bring our swords to the surface, for protection. Though I prefer to fight with my fists, or a staff, like my father taught me, when facing the sharp edge of a blade wielded by a crazy woman, I’ll take my sword.

Before she can take another step, I reach over my shoulder and slide the deadly steel weapon from the sheath running down my spine. “Back off. We’re not who you think we are.” My voice is a growl, rumbling from my chest.

The girl called Wilde—who, despite her name, seems the calmest and most in control—steps forward, one hand outstretched toward me and the other once more on Crazy-Girl’s arm. “There’s no need for that,” she says to me.

“Tell that to Short-Fuse over there,” I say, pointing the tip of my sword in Skye’s direction.

In the time it takes me to blink, I’ve got an arrow aimed at my heart, nocked on the bow of the third girl, the skinny one, who I’d almost forgotten about. From my training in archery with the star dwellers, I can tell she knows how to use it. I can’t count on her to miss.

“Whoa, whoa,” Tristan says, extracting his own sword from his belt. “We all need to just calm down.”

“Then tell your Glassy friend to stop pointing her searin’ sword at my sister,” the skinny girl says. So she’s the sister of the crazy one. Let’s hope insanity doesn’t run in their family.

I glance at Tristan and he nods. I lower my sword halfway, but not enough that I can’t defend myself if Skye takes a swipe at me.

“Good, that’s a start,” Wilde says. “Now you, Skye.”

Skye flashes an annoyed look in Wilde’s direction, but lowers her blade to the same level as mine. Despite her more relaxed stance, the tension remains in her body, her muscles taut, her knuckles splotched with white as they grip the hilt of her weapon.

“And you, Siena,” Wilde says. Siena. The sister. Wilde, Skye and Siena. Earth dwellers?

Siena continues to peer at me down the length of her arrow and I can’t help but hold my breath. All she has to do is release it and I’m dead. Whose stupid idea was it to come to the earth’s surface anyway? Oh right, it was mine.

“Siena!” Wilde says sharply, and the skinny girl lowers her aim, releasing the arrow with a dull
thwock
, embedding it into the dry earth.

“We don’t want to fight,” Tristan says, lowering his own weapon.
Speak for yourself
, I think. The way Skye continues to glare at me makes me want to crack a forearm shiver across her jaw. Why does she hate us so much? She doesn’t even know us.

Skye shifts her death stare to Tristan. “You shoulda thought of that ’fore you murdered our people, ’fore you declared war on the Tri-Tribes.”

Murder? War?
The Glassies. The people she thinks we belong to. “The Glassies murdered your people,” I say.

“Don’t play wooloo,” Skye says. “You were probably there with the rest of ’em.”

“We don’t even know who the Glassies are,” Tristan says. “I swear it.”

“Swear on the sun goddess,” Siena says. She pulls another arrow out of the pouch strapped to her back. Doesn’t nock it, just holds it. Like a warning. Lie and die.

“I don’t know who the sun goddess is,” I say, “but I’ll swear on her and my life and the lives of my mother and sister, too, if that’s what it takes for you people to listen.”

Skye suddenly stabs her sword into the ground. Chews on her lip. Sighs, as if exhausted. “If yer not Glassies, who the scorch are you? Yer as white as the snow-capped mountains of ice country, but yer not Icers—not dressed like that. And yer not Soakers ’cause yer not freckly and don’t smell like the big waters. With yer pale skin, you can only be Glassies. And what in the big-balled tug are you wearin’ over yer eyes and on yer heads? Looks like somethin’ them Glassies would wear, ain’t no mistaking.”

“Dammit!” I say, shoving my own sword into the ground. I’m angry and the sun isn’t helping—it’s hotter than I ever could’ve imagined, drawing sweat out of my skin like I’ve been running laps around the girls in front of us, rather than just standing here across from them. “We’re not freaking Glassies!” I rip my sunglasses off, but the light is so bright I have to shut my eyes, so I put them right back on. The brim of my hat casts a shadow down to my chin. Amidst the confrontation, I’d forgotten we were wearing them until Skye pointed it out.

“Adele, stay cool,” Tristan says, sliding his sword into his belt. Turning to our adversaries, he says, “Forgive us, we’re not used to the heat, the sun. We just came up here to have a look around. We don’t know who the Glassies ar—” He stops suddenly, like he’s been slapped. “The Glassies…” he murmurs, almost under his breath, trailing off.

“Tristan,” I say. “What is it?”

“Adele and Tristan,” Skye mutters, “what kinds of names are those?”

I ignore her, my attention fixed on Tristan, whose eyebrow is raised to the red sky. “Oh no,” he breathes.

“What?” I ask again.

“I think the Glassies are the earth dwellers,” he says.

Chapter Two

Siena

I
don’t know what it is, but I like something about this girl, Adele. She doesn’t look like us, certainly doesn’t talk like us, but the way she didn’t back down from Skye, never so much as looked away, reminds me so much of my older sister I can’t help but like her. If there’s one thing I learned from all my ’xperiences, it’s that you can’t judge people until you get to know ’em. The Icers, who I thought were the baggards of the earth, turned out to be mostly okay, ’cept for mad King Goff who was leading ’em. And the Stormers, who at first I had hated hated hated, were really the ones trying to do the right thing. Even the Soakers—despite their roughness and somewhat creepy lust for war ’n blood—weren’t so bad once the devil-incarnate Admiral Jones was dead. Scorch, my sister, Jade, even has a thing for one of ’em, and she was a slave for six years, so she’d know the good from the bad.

Now Adele is staring at the guy, Tristan she called him, with such intensity I almost wanna laugh. But I also wanna know what they’re talking ’bout. “What’s an earth dweller?” I say, thinking of Perry right away. My prickly friend is most definitely stuck in the earth, so I s’pose you could call him an earth dweller.

But Tristan doesn’t seem to hear me, or if he does he ignores me, ’cause he and Adele are staring at each other. Adele says, “President Lecter is slaughtering their people?” like it’s a question, but the look on her face tells me she’s not looking for an answer. She’s gone even paler, her cheeks a white sheen even under the shadow of the ridiculous piece of stiff cloth on her head.

“Who the scorch is President Lecter?” Skye asks.

Adele and Tristan both turn sharply toward us, like they’re only just remembering we’re here. Tristan’s hands are tightened into fists, which are turning slightly pink under the hot sun, like he wants to punch someone. If he tries anything, I’ll feather him with arrows quicker’n he can say sunburn.

“He’s a person, like us,” Tristan starts, but then stops suddenly, shaking his head. “Not like us, not really. I mean…” He’s having trouble explaining, which isn’t helping the tension in the air. I see Skye pull her sword outta the ground slowly. Just in case.

“Let me,” Adele says gently, placing a hand on Tristan’s arm, which is now trembling slightly. A simple touch, but it speaks so much to me. It’s the way I would touch Circ—the way he would touch me. More’n a touch—a feeling. These two mean a great deal to each other, that much is as clear as the cloudless sky above us.

Fingers brushing Tristan’s skin, Adele says, “Do you know of the people living underground?”

Wilde looks at Skye. Skye looks at me. I shake my head, say, “All we know is that one day the Glassies popped from the ground. Only they weren’t the Glassies, not yet. They were just white-skinned people, like you, trying to build shelters. It was a long time ago. They didn’t last very long. They weren’t used to the air. It’s…not good air.”

The guy, Tristan, takes a step back out of the sun, removes his eye coverings. Adele mimics his movements. Her eyes are huge, as big as a full moon, but his are even bigger. “What happened next?” he asks.

I shrug. “They came back. Not the same ones, of course, they were dead, but others. More prepared. Wearing funny suits. Protected somehow. I wasn’t even born, but we all know the history. Over many years they built huge structures, constructed a glass dome over everything. Only once the dome was finished did they stop wearing their funny suits. We don’t know for sure, but we think the dome protects ’em from the bad air. They live longer’n we do.”

“Why did they attack you?” Adele bursts out, like the question’s been pushing against her lips for a while now.

Wilde responds ’fore I can even begin to think of what to say. “They’re scared of us. Because we’re different than them.”

“They searin’ killed a bunch of us,” Skye adds, “but not all. They underestimated us. Now we’re gonna kill ’em. Startin’ with you.”

I watch as Adele’s fingers tighten ’round her sword handle. Her face hardens. It’s like watching Skye look at her reflection in the watering hole.

“Skye,” Wilde says, “we should listen to what they have to say.”

Skye doesn’t look convinced, but she relaxes her body a little, as if she’s not looking for a fight. But I know better. She’s still standing on the balls of her feet, still strung as tight as a bowstring, ready to spring into action if she doesn’t like what she hears. My fingers dance along the shaft of the pointer I’m holding, too, just in case I hafta use it.

Turning back to our visitors, Wilde says, “Tell us again who you are, how you fit in with the Glassies. You said you’re sun dwellers?”

“Yes.” Tristan nods vehemently. Says “Yes,” one more time. “Well, I’m a sun dweller. We live underground. There are three layers, Sun, Moon, and Star. Adele is a moon dweller, from the middle layer. The deepest are the star dwellers. There’s been a massive rebellion; our people have been fighting, because my father was…not a good man…a tyrant.”

Don’t I know the feeling
. Our father was a bad man, too, selling my younger sister, Jade, to the Soakers in exchange for what he thought was a Cure for the airborne disease killing my people. Only he didn’t want it for my people. Just for himself and a select group of leaders. Not a good man. I don’t cry when I remember his death. Killing him is ’bout the only good thing the Glassies’ve done.

“And the Glassies?” Wilde asks.

Tristan shifts from one foot to t’other. Is he nervous? “They used to be sun dwellers—at least, most of them. Some of them were moon and star dwellers too.”

“I told you!” Skye says. “They’re the same. They’re the enemy.” The tension is back in her arms. She lifts her sword.

“No!” Adele says, practically shouting, speaking quickly. “None of us knew they’d gone aboveground. None of us even knew it was possible. They—the earth dwellers, er, the Glassies—have cut themselves off from us. We had no idea what they were doing to your people. If you don’t believe us you can try to kill us, but by God you might die trying.”

Things are escalating too fast and I know that look in my sister’s eyes. And ’fore I even know what I’m doing, I throw down my bow and jump in front of her, grab her muscly arms, so much stronger’n my own, but she doesn’t fight me, doesn’t try to break through, almost like she knew I’d stop her and was only moving forward ’cause she felt like Adele’s words required an answer of force.

Behind me, Tristan says something I never coulda predicted. “We killed my father because he was evil. If President Lecter is as evil as you say he is, we’ll help you kill him too.”

Chapter Three

Dazz

I
don’t mind the deepening cold as we trek up the mountain. It’s familiar, like an old friend, crisp and alive, even as it creeps through my boots to my toes and reddens my nose.

“Do you think much has happened since we left?” Buff asks.

It hasn’t been that long, maybe two weeks. Despite the short length of our excursion away from ice country, there’s only one answer to my friend’s question. “Yes,” I say. The only question we asked Wilde before we parted ways was whether our families were safe. Knowing that was enough. Now I wish I’d asked more. Like “How is the new government coping?” and “Has King Goff received his sentence yet?”

“Dazz?” Buff says, snapping me away from my muddled thoughts.

“Yah?”

His only response is a hard-packed snowball to my gut. We’ve reached the snowfields.

I respond in turn, pelting him with a slushball that’s filled with gravel and twigs. And then we’re both whooping, relishing the powdery snow beneath our boots, our legs churning, suddenly zinging with energy, carrying us up the slope. We reach a rise, laughing, panting, elbows on knees.