Fire Country

Time’s a-wasting, but how I can I safely climb back down when my mind’s full of all this blaze? I gotta replace it with other thoughts, better thoughts. Circ’s arms around me, on my hips. His lips pressed against mine. I feel flutters in my stomach and I’m okay again. Ready to move.

Ever so slowly, I ease my way over the edge, the wind battering me, threatening to toss me over the side. Getting up was easy, but I don’t want a repeat of the last time when my only option for getting down was a free fall, broken only when my body smashed into the durt. A dull ache throbs through my legs and ribs just thinking ’bout it. Using my hand as a brake, I slide down the side, opening and tightening my fingers to regulate my speed. When my feet hit the bottom, pride surges through me. Even Perry says a few nice words, although I sense a hint of sarcasm in them.

Time’s a-wasting.

I move out on footsteps so light a hard-tracking Cotee’s ears would have trouble picking them up. The wind is whipping through my hair and I hafta dodge and duck as brambleweeds come a tumbling past, barely visible until the last moment. As cloudless as the previous night was, tonight’s cloudfull. I can’t see a single star behind the heavy blanket of black and gray. The only light comes from occasional glances by the moon goddess as she peeks between the roiling clouds. It looks like a spring storm’s coming, but it’s way too early for that—we ain’t even had our first sandstorm of the winter season yet.

I run and run and run, heading in the direction I saw the prisoners taking with their tools. Visibility is poor, good enough to see my own feet and what’s just ahead, but not nearly enough to see much further; so I rely on my ears to alert me if I’m getting close, hoping against hope that their march hasn’t become a silent one, in which case I might not know I’ve caught up until I run right into the back of one of them, a clumsy end to my brilliant plan. I’m also praying to the sun goddess that there ain’t no packs of Cotees out here. They usually stick well south of the village, where the hurds of tug are plentiful, but you never can tell.

Soon I’m loster’n a blind burrow mouse in a maze of sand tu

I’m about to turn back—whichever way back is—when I hear it. A clink, instantly lost on a shriek of wind. Then another. Careless tool carriers. Or carriers who don’t care at all.

I make desperately for the sound, covering my eyes against the bursts of sand-filled wind, but craning my ear in what I think is the right direction. My heart leaps when I hear voices. Angry. Mutinous. “This is madness. We’re all go

“Shut yer mouth and quit yer complainin’!” Keep shouts. “We go back when I say we do.”

I see them, finally. A haggard gaggle of prisoners, bent against the wind and sand, trudging at a snail’s pace through the desert. No wonder I was able to catch up with them. Just as I spot them they stop. I freeze, drop to the ground, get a mouthful of sand as it splashes up.

There’s more grumbling, but no one else is as bold as the last guy. When I peek my sand-crusted face over the dune, I see why. Keep’s got a pointer notched, aimed toward the group, keeping his distance. They could rush him, but he’d take out a few of them ’fore they could get to him. And probably none of them are willing to die for t’others.

They start moving again, and almost right away, the wind dies down, the airborne sand drops back to the ground where it belongs, and the clouds part, revealing the bright and full moon. Strange timing.

“See! What’d I tell yer?” Keep barks. “I knew it’d clear. Just a warnin’ storm. Nothin’ more.”

I follow silently.

It’s a long hike, and now that I’m not worried about a deadly sandstorm popping up, I keep my distance from the prisoners to ensure I’m not spotted. My mind turns to the slight smile and nod my mother gave me ’fore she left the hut last night. She approved of what I was doing, I’m sure of it. My whole life my mother has been this quiet, weak figure, taking everything my father can dish out without even a word against him. But now…now she’s an enigma. She’s still mostly subservient, but it’s like she’s plotting and scheming in the background, delivering cryptic messages to me in prison. I wonder what set her off? Does she know something I don’t? Or has she just had enough of his tirades, of his endless displays of power and authority? I might not be the sharpest pointer in the quiver, but I ain’t stupid either. I know when something’s cooking by the change in the air, the smell. And with my mother, something’s definitely in the pot, maybe not boiling yet, but starting to simmer for sure. An enigma.

Something about the landscape changes, catching my attention. I look down at my feet. The sand has disappeared, replaced by hard-packed earth. Not necessarily unusual for the desert, but that’s not what caught my attention. Green-stemmed plants poke from cracks in the dry earth, sprouting here and there. I kick at one with my toe and it bends all the way to the ground and then springs back up. Doesn’t crack or break like the dried and withered scrubweeds near the village. These are alive. Growing.

In fire country, spring brings a hint of green as fireweed, scrubweeds, brambleweeds, and scrubgrass begin to grow with each successive rainfall. But just as quickly as it starts, the growing season ends, chased away by the early summer’s heat. The plants turn brown, die, crack and blow away or become kindling for the summer brush fires that give our land its name.

It’s still winter and there ain’t no rain, least not in the desert. But maybe—

I lift my gaze and scan the country ’fore me. The prisoners are a long way off, but are halted, scattering their axes and picks around them. And towering over them: trees!

—we’re not in fire country anymore.

In the dead of the night, lit only by the watchful gaze of the moon goddess and her endless legions of star servants, I get my first ever glimpse of ice country.

~~~

I’ve never seen live trees ’fore, but I know that’s what they are. As endless as the sands of the desert, they rise up like watchtowers. And they don’t just go back and back and back. They go up, too. The land rises and rises in an arc, gentle at first, but then steeper and steeper. A mountain! It’s green and brown at the base, but quickly turns black as the trees thin out, disappear completely. And higher up, white. It’s like the entire top portion of this bigger’n-anything-I-ever-seen mountain is capped with a white cloak. Unbelievable.

My breathing’s all tight and heavy. I realize my lips are clamped shut and my nose is doing all the work. I open my mouth, breathe in the cool, night air. Cool? What? But it’s the right word, far as I know. The…air…isn’t…hot. I’ve only ever tasted cool air once ’fore. It was late winter and a spring rainstorm came real early, drowning fire country in three days of wet. On the third day, when everything was dripping and crying, it got downright shivery outside. I asked what it meant and my father said the air was cool.