Fire Country

Bart grabs her hair from the back, pulls her head away from his, snarls, “I said not tonight! Get out!” He pushes her out the tent opening, still naked as the day she was born. She’s shouting obscenities the whole way, both at him and at me. I’m not her favorite person right now.

He leans down, plucks a basket from the corner. To my surprise, it’s got a baby in it. I hadn’t even thought about the fact that Goola woulda had a child with him already. She ain’t exactly the motherly type, and thinking of him as a father is like thinking of a Killer as a pet. “Take Bart Jr. with you, too, Woman,” he says, depositing the basket outside. He pulls the tent flap shut, ties it off.

He turns his attention to me. Reflexively I cover my soaked chest with my arms. “See how easy she makes it look,” he says, gri

If he means wanting to kick him in the crotch repeatedly, then yes, I want it. Anything else, not so much. I back away, my mind churning, my eyes roving, trying to come up with any way out of this. Seeing nothing but pain. Go down fighting. Be Strong.

He steps toward me, suffocating me in the tiny space. A baby cries outside. “Get away from me,” I say.

Bart laughs. “Can’t do that,” he says. “You’re mine now. And I do what I want with my things.”

I take another step back, feel my feet sink into the soft bedding on the ground. He takes a big step forward, closing off any avenue of escape. There’s a glow in his eyes, a fire, a red hot desire. For me. To make me another one of his possessions.

I dive back, roll across the bedding, smash into the side of the tent. After the winter winds, a lot of the tents weren’t looking so strong, and I doubt if Bart’s the type to have rebuilt it from scratch. The tent wall blooms out, but holds, retracts, pushes me back into the center of the bed. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Bart grabbing for me, trying to get hold of my feet. I kick out, catch him in the eye and he lets out a howl, grabbing at his face. “You little shilt, I’ll kill you,” he snaps.

With every bit of force I can muster, I bash into the tent wall again, hoping it’ll cave in, give me a chance to escape in the confusion.

It holds, almost feels stronger’n the previous time, as if Bart’s anger is giving strength to his house. His turf. I’m completely knocked.

He grabs my feet and pulls me to him, batting away my flailing arms with ease. Smiling, he’s actually smiling, although his version of the happy expression makes me quiver inside. It’s too much teeth and not enough lips. And no dimples.

As if he’s practiced it his entire life, he swallows my ankles with a massive hand, clamps them together, and then uses his other paw to wrench my arms over my head. Roughly, he throws his weight on top of me and I can feel all of him bearing down on my body. The foul stench of his fire-juice-soaked breath comes in waves, rocking my senses and threatening to knock me out. I’m tempted to give in to the nausea, to hurl or faint or both—that’d put a quick end to all of this—but I won’t. Not today. Today I fight.

I throw a knee up hard, trying to catch him in the midsection, but he’s in control now and easily holds it down with his powerful legs. He’s breathing heavy, almost as if all my fighting and kicking and scratching is exactly what he wants, exactly what he hoped for. I shudder when I realize I’m only acting as a stimulant to every perverse fantasy this demon of a man has.

I cry out when he rips at my dress—my purity dress—his fingers like claws, tearing and shredding.

Oh sun goddess, no! Please, no, Circ—where are you?—come back to me.

Please.

Please.

My dress rips away and it’s just me underneath, frail and bony and Scrawny, barely covered by the thin fabric of my undergarments. It’s like my dress holds whatever strength I have left and when it falls away I’m left with nothing, only fear and exhaustion and weakness.

I feel him, his arousal, on top of me. He’s panting now, excited to take me, to take all of me, to take everything I have left. To chew me up and swallow me, making me a part of him forever and ever and ever.

I’m screaming now, crying and yelling things I’ll never remember, straining to get him off me, but he won’t budge, won’t move an inch. I’m his.

The tent door flaps open and a light breeze wafts through, tingling my sweat- and rain-soaked skin. Is it Goola? Come to reclaim her man? I try to look past Bart’s thick shoulder, but I can’t see anything but his flesh, hot and rough.

“Woman, I told you to leave us!” Bart yells without looking back. His lip is curled in anger and for a moment I think he might take it out on me, hit me in the face.

But then something strange happens. His mouth gasps open and his eyes go wide, like he’s been struck by lightning. With a shudder, he collapses on top of me, smothering me like water on the dying embers of a cook fire.

I can’t breathe, can’t move, and something warm is dribbling onto my skin.

“You’re okay now,” I hear the voice say, soft and gentle, almost cooing. A voice of comfort, one I’ve heard a million and a half times growing up, when I was sick or ski

My mother.

Bart’s body is rolled off me and she’s there, her face weary and anxious and smiling, her eyes bright despite looking so sunken. “I’m so sorry, Siena, I came as fast as I could, but the Fire, it…”

And then she’s crying and I’m crying and we’re holding each other, me ’cause she’s dying and out of strength and ’cause, despite all that, she came—she came!—and ’cause I’m still pure and she saved me and Bart’s…

“Is he dead?” I blubber over her shoulder. My eyes flick to Bart’s body, which has the handle of a knife sticking from his back, the blade lost in his flesh and i

She pulls me back, her face a red mess, says, “It matters not. We must hurry.”

The perfect crown of hair she created earlier is in shambles, collapsing in broken, wet strands onto my face. I push them away. “Mother, I don’t understand. Hurry where? We hafta tell the Greynotes what happened, that you saved me, that Bart’s an animal. They’ll believe us, they will!”

Mother’s eyebrows drop, her soft wrinkles full of compassion. She never had wrinkles until the Fire came. “This was not the life for your sister,” she says and I startle.

“Skye?” I say. “Skye was taken.”

“No,” she says. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t tell you, couldn’t tell anyone. I sent Skye away from here. To a safe place. She went to live with the Wild Ones.”

Her words don’t make sense. The Wilds? But they’re feral, they’re not civilized, they’re… “Kidnappers,” I say. “They took her.”

“Siena, I know this is a lot to take in, but you have to trust me. You have to go now. Your father, he’s a monster.”

She knows what I know. “Mother, I know, I know, I found out about the agreement with the Icers, how they give us wood and meat and we stay out of ice country, how the prisoners didn’t do anything wrong, how they’re forced to work, ’bout everything. We can tell the people. We can tell them!”

“You don’t know everything,” she says. “Your father, he’ll never get the Fire.”

She’s speaking in riddles. “I don’t understand, Mother. He’s not invincible. The plague’ll take him just like everyone else, just like you.”

“The Icers give him medicine,” she says. “Some kind of herbal drink. It fights the Fire. It’s part of the agreement with them. The most secret part. But I watch him, I see what he does—he can’t hide his treachery from me. We have to go.” She grabs me and pulls me to my feet, hands me a freshly sewn set of Hunter trousers and a shirt. For the first time in my life, I put on something that’s not a dress.