Fire Country

“Sie,” Circ says, his voice sounding stronger’n before. “Sie, I need you to know something.” I’m holding my breath, furiously blinking back tears. He fumbles at his wrist, almost frantic, like he’s fighting against time. His time.

He locates his bracelet, his charms. Snaps the leather, pulls one off. I can’t hold my breath any longer so I let it out in a gasp. “Circ, what are you—”

“Shhh,” he says, his voice sounding almost normal. Like usual, he’s comforting me. Am I the one dying? Did I fall from my cell in Confinement when I was trying to follow the workers? Did I dream everything? Am I dreaming now, in a confused state?

Reality comes rushing back when MedMa’s wagon rattles to a stop next to Circ. No, I’m not dreaming. Circ is dying, right ’fore my very eyes. Using his last few breaths to comfort me.

“Circ, I—”

“Take this,” he says, stuffing the charm into my hand, closing my fingers over it. MedMa and his apprentice rush ’round the cart. “Please know that someday we’ll be together.”

He grabs my wrist, squeezes it. MedMa lifts him into the wagon, starts rolling him away. “No!” I cry. “No, Circ, no. Don’t leave me. Don’t…” I collapse in the dust, mental and physical exhaustion setting in.

I lie still for a moment or two. When I sit up I feel empty, like the butcher’s gutted me. No heart. No will. No nothing. My fist is clenched and I feel the bite of cold metal in my skin.

When I peel back my fingers I see it. Circ’s charm, a pointer. His gift for his first Call. He’s given it to me.

Chapter Twenty

Eventually I come to my senses. Chase after MedMa’s wagon, catch up just as it reaches the Place of Healing. Circ is unconscious but still alive.

He can’t die. He said it himself:

Someday we’ll be together.

I hafta wait outside. MedMa has work to do. He makes it sound so ordinary. Work. Like building a tent or chopping down a tree or shoveling blaze. Work, like saving Circ’s life.

The sun comes out again. I search the sky but the dark clouds from earlier are gone, vanished. Not moved on. Just gone. I pray it’s not a sign for Circ. For us.

I sit in the durt, prop against the Healing hut. Spin Circ’s pointer charm through my fingers, watching it catch the light. Under the Law, he’s not permitted to give it to me, but he did. If he survives I don’t know what it’ll mean. He’s too young to be a Call, and anyway, you can’t choose. The Greynotes decide. I unfasten my bracelet and slide his charm onto the band, next to mine. The tree and the pointer. Together at last.

For what it’s worth, I think healing thoughts for Circ.

He won’t die. He won’t. Can’t. I’m two full moons from my Call, the most important moment of my life, so he hasta be there, right? He’s young, strong, invincible. Good at everything. Even surviving. He’ll survive, ’cause he never loses.

Everything catches up with me at that moment. The constant name-calling at Learning. The endless fights with my father. Confinement. The boneyard on the edge of ice country. Raja, framed for murder. My broken wrist. Saving Circ from the Killers only to find him on a knife’s blade. My body shakes and shudders, my hands trembling as I tuck them ’round my head. Every tear I have left pours from my eyes like a spring rain—the flood of the last few full moons of my shattered and broken life.

Without him, it’s over.

MedMa opens the door.

I look up, unable to see, but seeing more clearly’n I’ve ever seen ’fore.

Circ’s dead.

“I’m sorry. I did everything I could,” MedMa says. I hate him. Hate his apologies. Hate the Killers. Hate ’spiracies and life sentences and duty and the Law. Hate my father.

As I stand up, my face is full of heat. From the hot, bubbling tears that well up from tear ducts that shoulda been empty long ago. From the anger coursing through every blood-carrying vein in my body. From the sun that’s beating—beating, smashing, pummeling—down upon me. There’s no mercy in the sun goddess’s gaze. Not today. I hate her, too.

I run.

~~~

I don’t know where I go, or how far, or who I see. There’re voices, so many voices, but none of them are alive. Not to me.

Not even I’m alive. I can’t be, not if Circ’s not.

My legs are already exhausted but I don’t notice the way they ache and throb. Just keep ru

And then I’m there.

Our place. The Mouth.

Our dunes.

Empty, so empty, without Circ’s laughter, his jokes, his knees touching mine, his warmth against me. It doesn’t even feel like a real place anymore.

My legs falter and I fall, feeling a twinge of pain in my injured arm as I land on it. The pain helps. I crawl my way to our nook, scrabble in the sand, scooping out shovelfuls till I’ve made a hole, big enough for only one. Curl up inside it, close my eyes, pretend the sand that’s closing in around me is him, holding me, protecting me.

Someday we’ll be together.

How could he lie to me like that? Someday’ll never come. Never. Even if he’d lived it wouldn’t have come. The Law wouldn’t allow it. My father wouldn’t allow it.

With the wind blowing grains of sand over me and the sky darkening to dusk, I cry myself to sleep, held only by a pocket of sand and memories of Circ.

~~~

Blackness greets me when I wake. The merciless sun goddess is asleep and the moon goddess and her lieges are taking a day off.

For a moment I don’t know where I am and I thrash about, as if I’m being attacked. But then I feel it. The sand, soft and warm against my fingertips, tucked ’round me. In a muddled stream of images, everything comes rushing back. Circ’s anguished expression as he pushed the charm into my hand. MedMa shaking his head. My run into the desert.

My mother’ll be worried ’bout me, but I don’t care. It’s as much her fault as my father’s that this happened. She encouraged me to think ’bout what I want, make my own decisions. Well I did and look where it got me. Look where it got Circ. I killed him. ’Cause I made him sneak out that night, all to grizz off my father, get him to send me back to Confinement so I could play investigator.

A Cotee howls in the distance, perhaps ’cause he’s picked up my scent, or maybe for no reason at all. Regardless, it gives me the chills. I roll out, stand up, wipe the salt and sand from my face, and walk numbly back toward the lights of the village. There are still a lot of them, so it’s not that late.

With each step the anger builds.

By the time I reach our hut, my body is coiled and ready to strike. I’ll fight anyone or anything right now. With my scrawny body, I’ll probably lose, but I’ll fight. I open the door.

My mother leaps up from where she’s sitting, rushes to me, but I stop her with a hand and a look. “Siena,” she says, “I’m so sor—”

“Don’t,” I say through my teeth.

Sari shepherds my Call-Brother and Call-Sister out the door into the night. She knows that whatever’s ’bout to go down is not for childrens’ eyes.

My father rises behind her, less quickly, at his own measured pace. There’s compassion in his eyes, in his tone. False compassion. “Yes, Siena. We’re both very sorry. It’s a true tragedy for the village.”

“For the village?” I say, my voice rising. “This is your fault. Yours alone.”

“It’s no one’s fault, Youngling. Life is fragile, especially for us. We lost another three to the Fire today. All we have is duty, the Law.”

I take a step forward. “Don’t,” my mother warns.