Fire Country

They close in, blood in their eyes, licking their lips.

“C’mon!” I yell and it doesn’t faze them. They just keep moving, padding along, vicious and graceful.

One gets too close. I jab the bugger in the neck with my knife, surprised at how easily the sharp weapon slides through his fur and skin and inside him. Warm liquid flows over my hand and when I pull the blade away it’s coated with red. First blood has been spilt.

The Cotee almost looks surprised, it’s jaw wagging open, it’s eyes bugging out, like it’s wondering how the scorch an outnumbered runt of a girl managed to get the best of him. He staggers like he’s had too much fire juice, goes down on one knee, and then collapses, tongue hanging from his mouth and eyes rolled back into his head. Dead. ’Cause of me, who ain’t the fighter.

The others waste no time. They pounce from all sides, biting and clawing. I hack with my knife, but it’s fruitless. There’re too many and I’m too weak. I fall to the ground, part of a moving pile of hair and squirming bodies and stars, oh how many stars, peeking in from between cracks in the mass of animal bodies surrounding me. Circ watching. Watching. Watching.

I’m coming, Circ.

The world goes black.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

All that’s left is darkness.

I expected to see a burst of light, maybe the sun or the moon or the stars, or even all three at once, coming to greet me, to welcome me to t’other side. But all I see is a thick fog of darkness. Dread fills my heart when I realize where I must be: Scorch. The underworld. ’Cause of my actions—disobeying my father, not fulfilling my duty as Bearer, ru

No chance of seeing Circ here.

Awareness leaves me and I fall into a deep pit of sleep.

~~~

It’s still dark when I awake. Sleep beckons me but I push him away, tell him to pick on someone else. Try a naughty prickler named Perry. He could use some sleep.

Using only my mind, I try to cast away the fog that surrounds me. My hands don’t work. Nor my legs. None of my parts, ’cept for my mind. Push, swim, breathe, thud thud, thud thud, thud thud. The beat of my heart is like thunder in my head.

Don’t make sense.

The dead’s hearts don’t beat.

Darkness surrounds and I fall away.

~~~

When I awake the third time, the world is one big mess of light. I cringe, shield my face. Maybe darkness was a better option. No! If I’m in the light, then I can see Circ! He’ll be here somewhere, wherever stars go when they’re off duty.

I remember my beating heart. Musta been a bad dream.

Blink, blink, blink away the haze and the spots.

Blink again.

Blink some more.

The world reappears and I’m not in the land of the gods. I’m in the desert. Still. A hand on my chest reveals my heart: still beating. Not dead. As far from Circ as death from life.

A voice startles me. “You’re awake,” it says.

Everything comes rushing back in a swarm of memories. My mother’s face, red and old and stricken with the Fire; Bart’s rank breath on my tongue, his arousal pushed up hard against me; his dead body, limp and bloody at my mother’s hand; my flight, the alarms, the Hunt; the Cotees, all over me, tearing my flesh, ripping me away. “The Cotees,” I say, my voice whisper-soft.

“Dead,” the voice says. A male voice. Old. Maybe twenty. “You killed them.”

I’m dizzy and muddled, but I ain’t stupid. “Tugblaze,” I say. “I killed one, maybe two at the most, but not all.” I twist my neck to find the mouth that’s co

A laugh, deep and slow. “Well, your mind’s recovering,” he says. “You’d already killed one when I chanced upon you, and you had your knife buried in another one, so I guess I can give you credit for that one too. The rest were mine.”

Violence is sharp and threatening in his tone. Shivers run down my spine. “What are you going to do to me?” Memories flash and dance. Bart grabbing me, holding me down, trying to use me.

“You have nothing to worry about. Soon as you’re well enough, we’ll be going our separate ways.” The sharpness is gone from his voice, replaced by a soothing melody that feels like the warmth from one of MedMa’s healing salves.

His shadow kneels over me, then the real him. I blink furiously, afraid this might be the last chance I have to glimpse he who saved me from the Cotees. He’s blurry at first, but then his image sharpens like a spear point. When it does, I jerk back, try to push to my feet, to run, to escape, to get as far away from him as I can. But my body won’t cooperate and all I do is spasm on the ground, feeling hot lashes of pain on my arms, legs, belly, ankle. Fierce, red pain everywhere. But the pain is nothing compared to the fear.

‘Fore me stands one of them. The Marked. And all I can think ’bout is what my mother told me ’bout Brev: He started the Marked and I never saw him again.

~~~

Apparently I passed out again. My body is in turmoil, fighting against the blood loss and the shock of all the bites and claw scrapes from the Cotees.

When I awake this time I’m ready. “Let me go,” I say, not opening my eyes, not wanting to see him again.

“You’re not a captive,” his voice comes back, clear and warm.

“Then why’d you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Save me.”

“Because you were in my trap.”

What? The steel-teethed trap is his? “So you owed me?”

“I don’t owe you a thing.”

“None of this woulda ever happened if not for your searin’ trap!” I say, raising my voice to the loudest it’s been. Still barely more’n a whisper.

“Not my fault you were stupid enough to step in it,” he says, keeping his voice irritatingly calm.

“Stupid? How dare you! I almost died ’cause of your burnin’ trap!” My eyes flash open and I wince when I see him standing over me. But this time I don’t try to run, just stare at him, trying to hide my disbelief at his appearance.

He’s practically naked, only a small brown loincloth covering his midsection. Like Circ was, he’s muscled from head to toe, but longer and leaner, like one of the trees I saw in ice country on a night that now seems like a million lifetimes ago. His skin is hairless, either shaved or plucked or perhaps never there at all. But that’s not what startled me the first time I laid eyes on him. It was the markings. They cover him from head to toe, strange and black and rough, like the textured bark on the trees. Everything ’bout him is so much like the trees I almost expect him to sprout green leaves that’ll drop from his arms in the fall.

He sees me staring and smiles. “You like what you see?” he says, rolling each word off his lips.

I crinkle my nose in disgust. “’Bout as much as I like a dead tug carcass,” I say, “and I can’t help but stare at that just the same, too.”

He smirks. “It wasn’t my trap that almost killed you. You shouldn’t have been wandering the desert alone in the dark. What were you doing out here by yourself?”

“That’s my business.” I realize I’m still staring at his body, trying to make sense of the markings. I also realize I’ve barely even looked at his face.

When he replies, my gaze snaps up. “Suit yourself,” he says, walking out of my field of vision. But his image remains, burned in my mind, where I can review it as long as I want. Even his head was free of hair, as bald as the day he was born, shaped like a dome. A nice-shaped head, for what it’s worth. It’s worth nothing. Nobody cares about a nice-shaped head. Even his head had the markings, thick bands and arrowheads, and strange shapes I don’t recognize. Only his face is free of them. Which is a good thing ’cause he had a handsome face. Not exactly smoky, like Circ, but pleasing to the eye. Not repulsive, like the rest of him.