The Girl of Fire and Thorns Complete Collection (13 page)

“Let me,” Mara says, grabbing the child from Carella’s arms. The girl is about five or six, too big to carry easily, but her mother’s movements are slow and staggered, as if she’s badly injured. Or maybe she has breathed too much smoke.

Carella steps from the cover of the smithy into the plaza.

“Wait!” Mara calls. “This way; we must stick to cover.”

Carella looks over her shoulder. “Take her. Keep her safe.” She hobbles forward, into the light, clear air, revealing the blood soaking the back of her skirt, streaming down her right ankle. She reaches her arms to the sky as if summoning heaven itself. “Go, Mara! Now!”

Mara freezes.

A firebolt streams through the sky and plunges into Carella’s torso. She stumbles but does not fall, even as her blouse and hair catch flame, turning her into a fiery goddess. “Go!” she screams.

A second firebolt sends her crashing to the ground.

Mara hitches the child tight to her chest and flees.

6

T
HE children are waiting right where she told them to. The tiniest girl’s chin and blouse are soaked with red-tinged phlegm. At Mara’s questioning look, Reynaldo says, “She’s been coughing up blood.”

Oh, God.
If she has internal injuries, there is nothing they can do.

Reynaldo’s eyes flash when he notices Mara’s patchy hair and her bruised eye—her bruised eye . . . when did that happen?—but his gaze slides over it like water, a veil clouds his face, and her injuries are suddenly invisible to him. She’s seen it happen dozens of times before. The villagers always turned a blind eye to this, the handiwork of her father.

“We need to get away,” Mara says. She doesn’t want to scare the children more than necessary, but she can’t bring herself to lie either. “The gully behind me is starting to catch fire, and the Inviernos could have scouts in the area. So we move fast and quietly. There will be no talking unless it’s to call out a warning. Understood?”

They nod in unison.

“What about my brother?” Adán asks. “Did you see Julio?”

“He’ll meet us on the Shattermount.”

As they exchange fearful glances and murmur among themselves, Mara considers that lying might have been better after all.

“Mamá says I’m not allowed on the Shattermount,” says one little girl.

The boy beside her nods solemnly. “There are bears.”

“Flash floods!” says Adán.

Mara sighs, knowing there is no safe way to lead them. “Yes, there might be bears. And flash floods. And even ghosts,” she says. “But do you know what the Shattermount doesn’t have?”

The children shake their heads.

“It doesn’t have Inviernos. It’s too frightening a place for them. Only Joyans are brave enough for the Shattermount.”

“I’m not afraid,” says Adán. A chorus of “Me neither” follows.

Thank you, Adán.

“Will we climb the slope or stick to the fault?” Reynaldo asks.

“The fault. It’s out of sight.” Julio’s family maintained a trap line on the Shattermount, as did a few other villagers. No one has seen signs of Inviernos there. Yet. But it’s better to be cautious. No one had seen them in the village either, before this morning. “We’ll keep an eye on the sky.” Rain, even a day’s journey away, could mean a flash flood.

Reynaldo nods agreement, and she suddenly wants to hug his gangly form, just for being almost grown up, someone who can help make decisions and look out for the little ones.

They set off, quietly as promised. They walk for hours, and Mara’s thighs burn with effort, for the Shattermount is a steep, wide-based monolith that marks the transition from desert foothills to the mighty slopes of the Sierra Sangre. In its upper reaches, the desert scrub gives way to pine, the gravel to granite, the rain to snow. A thousand years ago, or maybe more, a great cataclysm opened a huge fault line right down the center. This shattering resulted in a mountain with a deep groove and twin peaks. Julio always compared them to the horns of a mighty goat. Mara preferred to think of them as the ears of a great lynx.

The sun is low at their backs, sweat is stinging Mara’s ruined scalp, and a few of the children are beginning to stumble from exhaustion when they walk right into a campsite.

The children rush forward, recognizing a few friends. Four more survivors—three children and one badly injured adult. Two horses. A pack full of supplies. A cheery fire sending smoke tendrils into the sky.

Mara sizes it up quickly, but as everyone hugs and cries and laughs with delight, she hangs back, her relief at seeing others turning to despair. Because she made a mistake, one that could have gotten them killed. She should have scouted ahead. What if this had been an Invierno camp?

No more mistakes. She strides over to the campfire and kicks dirt and gravel onto it. When the flames are low enough, she stomps it out.

“What are you doing?” asks a young boy, his face furious.

She whirls on him. “Have you lost your mind? Do you want to bring the Inviernos down on us? You might as well send them a letter. ‘Here we are! Survivors for you to come kill!’ I can’t believe you all were so stupid.” Her face reddens as the words leave her mouth.

Joy dissipates from the camp like a drop of water poured on scorched earth. Some stare guiltily at her. Others glare.

With a resigned voice, Reynaldo says, “Mara’s right. No fires. Not until it’s safe.”

Mara knows she should say something encouraging. Something optimistic. But she doesn’t know what. She has never been good with people. A bit withdrawn, Julio tells her. Due to a lifetime of hiding her bruises and scars—the ones on her body and on her soul.

She looks to the one adult in the group for support. He sits slumped over by the now-dead fire, clutching his side. He raises his head briefly, and she finally recognizes him—it’s Marón, owner of the Cranky Camel and the richest man in the village. His skin is corpse-white, his eyes glazed. The two horses belong to him. With a start, she realizes that he didn’t lead the children here. He is too far gone.
They
rescued
him
.

And suddenly Mara knows what to say.

“You are all very brave for making it this far, and I’m proud of you.”

7

T
HERE are not enough blankets to stave off the cold night. Mara and Reynaldo organize the children into groups and tell them to huddle close for sleep. “We’ll have a fire when we get to the cave,” Mara promises them.

Mara lies down, with Carella’s daughter and the tiny coughing girl tucked into the crook of her curved body. And when bright morning sun batters her eyelids awake, she is surprised to find that she slept long and hard.

But Marón, the tavern owner, died during the night. Mara enlists Adán’s help to drag his stiffening body into the brush and cover it with deadfall—quickly, before all the children wake. When they do, she tells them the truth. One little girl collapses to the ground, crying. His daughter.

As they break camp and prepare for the day’s journey, she overhears them talking about loved ones. So many friends and family members that they left behind. Some are known to be dead. But most were simply separated sometime during the chaos of the attack. Most, they hope, might still be alive.

But Mara saw too many bodies, blackened and oozing, for there to be many survivors. And suddenly she wonders if she should have let the children see Marón’s body. Maybe a large, single dose of pain now is better than the slow, burning pain of withering hope. Maybe seeing death up close is an important part of saying good-bye.

Right before they set off, Mara takes stock of their provisions. In addition to the supplies in Pá’s bag, Reynaldo and two others thought to grab jerky and water skins. The pack on Marón’s horse holds cooking utensils, a bag of dates, two blankets, a knife, a spongy onion, and a round of bread. It’s so much better than nothing, but they’ll need to find food fast. The nearest village is a week’s journey, but Mara isn’t sure it’s the safe choice. It might suffer the same fate as her own village. Maybe when they get close, she and Reynaldo can scout ahead.

But first, the cave—and Julio.
Please be all right, Julio. Please be safe.
She has purposely not allowed herself to consider the way the rain of arrows started again just as suddenly as it stopped. As if the distraction Julio provided had vanished like smoke.

They hike all day to reach the cave. The climb is steep, and the little ones tire quickly. She and Julio reached it in half that time, on that precious, precious day months ago.

It’s exactly the way she remembered, with a sun-soaked ledge outside the crooked opening. The air is drenched with a clean, sharp scent from the juniper surrounding the ledge, keeping the cave invisible from below. What she
doesn’t
see is any sign of life. No campfire. No footprints. No Julio.

She helps the tiny, coughing girl onto the ledge, then Mara abandons the children to rush inside the cave. “Julio?” she calls, and her voice echoes back with emptiness. “Julio?” she repeats, as if calling louder will summon him.

Someone comes to stand beside her. “He’s not here, is he?” Adán says.

“He will come,” Mara says, though her gut twists. She takes a deep breath. “All right, everyone. Let’s get settled. Reynaldo, if you build that fire, I’ll make a soup tonight.”

The cavern already boasts a fire pit in its center. It’s a narrow but long chamber, with a ceiling high enough that only she and Reynaldo must hunch over. She knows from experience that cracks in the ceiling provide an outlet for smoke. There is plenty of room for all nine of them during the day, but a shortage of level floor space will make sleeping a challenge. There might be space for everyone if she, Adán, and Reynaldo sleep outside on the ledge, rotating watches.

Mara throws together a thin soup of jerky with onions and garlic. As they take turns spooning it from her cooking pot, she sizes up the group. She is the oldest, at seventeen. Reynaldo is fifteen, Adán fourteen. Everyone else is younger, down to the tiny girl, who can’t be more than four. Mara is glad to note that her coughing has subsided, and it no longer turns up blood. Maybe something will go right for them after all.

She doesn’t know all their names. Her village isn’t that large, but skirmishes with the Inviernos have caused a lot of migration among the hill folk, and when the animagus burned her village, it was half full of strangers.

She could ask their names. She
should
ask their names. But she’s suddenly overcome with the sense that she might learn who they are only to see them die.

Later. She’ll ask later. She wants to be silent and alone with her thoughts a little bit longer.

Looking into their ash-covered faces, their eyes filled with both hope and terror, Mara marvels at how two such opposite-seeming emotions can exist inside her. She wants to save them. But bitterness grinds away at her heart too. These are the children of the people who turned blind eyes to her pain. They bought her pastries and her wool quick enough, but never in her life did anyone ask, “Mara, how are you
really
?” Until Julio.

Once Julio arrives, she won’t have to be in charge anymore. He’ll be the oldest of their group, at nineteen. He’s confident and outgoing, well liked by everyone. He’ll know how to deal with the children. Julio likes taking care of people. He’ll relish the responsibility.

Mara is about to go out to the ledge to take the first watch, but the tiny girl toddles over. Mara sits as still as a statue as the girl climbs into her lap. She grabs a fistful of Mara’s shirt and snuggles in tight. Then Carella’s daughter sidles up, lays her head on Mara’s thigh, and falls fast asleep.

After a moment, Mara’s shoulders relax. She wraps one arm around the tiny girl and lets her other hand rest on Carella’s daughter’s silky head.

8