Fire Country

Outta options.

Perry’s chanting, “Do it, do it, do it!”

I do it. I wait until my swing takes me into a more or less vertical position and then I release the bar and drop, trying to keep my legs bent slightly to cushion the fall. For a painfully short moment, I’m weightless, free, untouchable. And then the unforgiving ground touches me. Hard. Like a forearm shiver, but across the whole of my body. My feet hit first, pushing a shockwave up my legs and into my hips, spreading like wildfire from there. My knees give out, sending me rolling—not again!—across my cage. This time it’s only one roll though, one big flop, a stomach-jostling smacker that knocks all the air out of me. At least Perry is on the other side of the bars this time, unable to prick me.

Can’t breathe.

Can’t breathe.

I wheeze and gasp as I roll over to lie on my back.

Ratatatat! “Siena!”

Wheeze. Gasp. No voice. No breath. No way to respond.

“Siena!” Keep repeats.

“Here,” I whisper, like I’m back in Learning and Teacher is checking for skippers. But my voice comes out softer’n the rustle of windblown sand. Keep can’t hear me.

“I see ya there, Girl. I knows yer ain’t used to our ways ’ere, but it’s not difficult. I says yer name, and yer respond. Let’s try it again.”

Wheeze. Gasp. Lips moving but no words coming out.

“Siena!”

“Yeah,” I croak, my voice the timbre of a horny toad, my animal of choice for this evening. Perry laughs.

“See, not too hard, eh?” Keep says. He moves on to Raja.

My throat opens and I greedily gulp down the breezy air. My heart slows. My body aches. Perry mocks. Searin’ Perry.

“What the scorch are you doing over there?” Raja hisses when Keep’s moved on down the line. “I heard a thump.”

I clench my jaw. “Nothing,” I say. “Just sleeping. Or trying to.”

“Tugblaze. I heard you thrashing around in the durt like you’s fighting something.”

“It’s too dangerous to tell you, Raja,” I say, turning his words back on him. “If I told you, they’d kill you, and they’d kill me.”

I slump to the side, gri

Chapter Fourteen

It’s nice waking up in my own bed, watching through the window as the sun peeks over the horizon, spraying ribbons of red in every direction. A heavy bank of thick, yellow clouds moves swiftly across the sea of pinkish-reddish sky. It’s a very windy day. Through our door, which is open a crack, I can smell the windstorm that’s coming. Might even turn into the first sandstorm of the winter season. I can’t smell it yet, but if there’s a sandstorm coming, my nose’ll pick up on it soon enough. I been sniffing out storms my whole life.

Yesterday was a throw-a-way. I was too battered and sore and exhausted to do anything but sleep it off. I coulda just as easily done that in my cage, but I was sure thankful to do it here, on my tugskin sleeper.

I heard Circ come to call on me, but Mother turned him away, said I needed to rest. She was right. Thankfully my father wasn’t around when he stopped by—he mighta made a scene.

The crack in the door widens and my father’s heavy outline appears in the opening. His eyes are small, no more’n pinpricks. He grunts when he sees me awake. He didn’t say a word to me yesterday. I wonder if his grunt means today’ll be the same. I can hope, can’t I?

Nope.

He strides directly over to me, not even stopping to slip off his dusty moccasins. My Call-Mother’ll hafta sweep up the mess later. There’s a shadow on my face as he looms over me. “Youngling,” he says.

“Head Greynote,” I say, returning his formalness.

“Did you learn anything from your trip to Confinement?”

Scorch, yeah! Heaps! All about how people sent there are treated like animals, caged, poorly fed. About how it’s possible to escape if you’re all skin and bones, like me. And oh yeah, I found out about some ’spiracy with the Icies, how ’bout that?

At least that’s what I think. What I say is, “Yessir. I’ll be behaving from now on. Don’t want to go back there again. Never.”

Although I know I give the right response, he frowns, maybe sensing the deceit in my voice. “Good,” he says. “Don’t make me send you there again. The next time your stay might not be so short.”

As he starts to head for the door, I say, “Congratulations, Father.” He turns, looks back at me. “On Head Greynote.”

His face is flat. “It’s not an award or a celebration. It’s a duty. It’ll do you well to remember that.”

And then he’s gone, the flaps of his slitted leather shirt wagging about the moment he steps out the door, the wind whipping them into a frenzy.

It’s a very windy day.

I wonder what the wind’ll carry into the village.

~~~

“We’re leaving soon,” Circ says.

Yeah, I’m hanging around Circ still. I guess my father’s little lesson in Confinement didn’t really take. As long as I don’t get caught, right?

I nod. “And you’ll be back in three days?” I ask for the tenth time. A burst of sand shivers overhead. It never comes back down, carried along by the ever-strengthening wind. The trip back to the village’ll be awful, but for now we’re protected in our spot in the Mouth, dug in on the backside of one of the two big dunes.

He looks at me with one dimple. “We’ve gone over all this. It’s an investigation. We’re not going to war.”

I raise my chin. “Oh, you think I’m worried? No, no, I just know I’m going to be bored stiffer’n a day-old dead burrow mouse with you gone,” I say, giving him my best champion’s smile. Although I’ve never been a champion and probably never will, it don’t hurt to practice.

He laughs, short and high-pitched, humoring me. “Don’t get into any trouble while I’m gone or I won’t be there to visit you in Confinement.”

“It seems I only get into trouble when you are around,” I say, ramming my knee against his. “And for your information, I had two other visitors’n you, my mother and Lara. So I think I’m covered there.”

His eyes widen. “And you didn’t tell me this earlier?” He’s turned grumpy on me.

“We’ve only been setting here for one thumb of sun movement, maybe less. And I’m telling you now, ain’t I?”

Circ shrugs, bashes his knee against mine and I wince. “Ouch! Sear it all to scorch, Circ, that hurt like a machete blade.”

His hands are on my knee in an instant, rubbing and massaging it. “Sorry, Sie, I didn’t realize I cracked you that hard.” His touch feels warmer’n a hot summer’s day.

“No, it wasn’t that,” I say. “I’m just a tad tender.” I keep my eyes down, on my knee where he’s rubbing it, but I can feel his frown all over my face.

“Why’s it tender?”

I say nothing.

“Sie? What is it you’re not telling me?”

Like I always do with Circ, I spill my guts. I hate dropping all these boulders on him just before his mission, but I never could keep anything from him. Nor do I want to. It’s nice having someone who knows my every thought. Secrets’ll chew you up inside, swish you around, and then spit you in the dust. Maybe even stomp you down a bit. Right away, I feel better after I tell him.

“Holy jumpin’ prickler roots, Sie!” Circ exclaims when I finish. “You jumped from the roof?”

I blink. Now that he says it that way, it all sounds pretty wooloo, like maybe something I dreamed, or made up. With a shrug, I say, “Uh, yeah. Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Wow! First the thing with the Killers, and then this. You’re getting bolder by the day. Maybe it should be you going on this mission.”