Fire Country

Brev. The name pops in my head and although I don’t want to talk to the Marked one anymore, I know I hafta. I hafta ask him.

I try to sit up, but a flash of pain bursts in my skull and I’m gone again.

~~~

When I regain consciousness it’s night again. The stars are out, but I can’t find Circ. He’s probably looking for me in the land of the gods, where I’d be if not for the Marked man.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

I can’t see him, which makes me uncomfortable, so I try to sit up again, taking it slower this time. One elbow up, then the other. Ease higher until I’m sitting. He’s sitting across the warm glow of a cook fire. A rusty ol’ pot’s a-steaming away, filling my nostrils with an aroma that’s both tangy and bitter at the same time.

“My name’s my bus—”

“Your business, I know,” he says, cutting me off. “Well, I’m Feve, in case you’d like to know. My name’s not business, far as I know. It’s just a name.”

Through the crackling fire he almost looks normal. I can’t see his markings, just his face. He could be a guy from the village. A potential Call.

“I’m Siena,” I say, wondering why I said it.

He smiles, undimpled but warm. Like everything ’bout him. Warm as a spring afternoon. “That wasn’t so hard, now was it?”

“You ain’t charming nothing else outta me,” I say.

“So it was my charm that did it?” he says, his eyes flashing with firelight.

“No, that’s not what I meant! I meant…you just twisted my words.”

“Twisted?” he says, the amused smile still playing on his lips. “You said it, not me.”

I sit back, leaning on my elbows. If that’s the way he’s go

Brev. A name I’d never heard a few days back—now a name I can’t forget.

He rises, bringing his markings back into view. A snake coils around his stony abdomen, disappearing behind him. Three spears cross in such a way that they almost look like the skeleton of a tent. There are many more markings, but my brain goes dizzy from trying to make sense of them all.

“Here, drink this,” he says, dipping a skin into the steaming pot. He hands it to me.

“What is it?” I ask, turning up my nose when I taste bitterness in the steam.

“Marked secret,” he says, winking. “It’ll help with the pain and the healing.”

I sit up, accept it, cup the skin in both hands. “What are you, some kind of MedMa?”

“MedMa?” he says, cocking his head at an angle.

“Medicine Man,” I elaborate. “We’ve got one in our village. He heals the sick, treats the wounded.”

He laughs, sits down next to me. Too close. I edge away.

“All of my people learn how to heal,” he says.

His answer surprises me. All of them? Seems like a lot of wasted time when one person could do the job just fine. As if reading my mind, he says, “You’d be dead if I didn’t know the right herbs to use, how to wrap your wounds.”

My wounds? The biting, the clawing, the trap. Wounds! Of course I’d have them in plenty. But I’ve barely been conscious long enough to think ’bout anything, much less my wounds. I chew on his words and then spit them out when I realize what he’s done. “What’d you do to me?” I shriek, pulling away from him, clawing at my britches as if I’m one of the Cotees that tried to kill me. When I lift my bloody, torn trousers up high enough, I see the truth. Shreds of cloth are wrapped tightly ’round my ankle, my legs below my knees, my legs above my knees—waaaay above my knees.

My hands scrabble at my shirt and lift it too. Heavy cloth covers the skin, spotted with blood. “You touched me?” I accuse.

“You were dying,” he says calmly. “I treated you.”

The thought of me lying there unconscious while this Marked man did whatever it is he did to me—touched or bandaged or treated me—makes me feel sick and I throw down the skin, letting the bitter, tangy liquid bubble out. “How dare you?” I say.

“You’d rather be dead?” he asks evenly.

“No…I mean, yes…I mean, maybe,” I say, sputtering. Protectively, I cover my chest with my arms, not dissimiliar to when Bart was looking me up and down.

His voice is devoid of all humor. “What happened to you, Siena?”

When he says my name it fills my heart with warmth, as if it’s someone I care ’bout speaking it. But he’s no one, a stranger, one of the Marked. “Nothing.”

“What do the charms on your bracelet mean?” he asks.

“Nothing.

“What about the one with the pointer? What does that mean?”

I say nothing.

“Who does it belong to?” he asks, and my eyes jerk to his. Does he know? Are his questions all part of an act when really he knows the truth ’bout everything? ’Bout what happened to me, to Circ—what’s happening even now to the village?

“What do you know ’bout it?” I say, breaking my silence.

Feve looks at me with an intensity that’s almost scary. Almost. “Tell me,” I demand.

“I don’t know anything, but I’m a good guesser,” he says.

“Well so am I,” I say. “Does the name Brev mean anything to you?”

His eyes snap to mine and there’s a flare of anger, which ain’t what I expected. “What did you say?” he says, all warmth stripped from his voice.

I pause, wondering why Feve suddenly seems so hot and bothered. “You heard me,” I say.

“That name means nothing,” he says. “’Cause he’s dead.”

~~~

He won’t say another word after that, no matter how hard I try to make him. Finally I drink a fresh skin of the healing liquid and it helps with the pain. Warm and confused, I drift off to sleep.

When I awake, Feve is gone.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

He left me a skin of herbal tea, enough Cotee meat to last a quarter full moon, and a head so muddled I’m afraid it’s full of durt and sand and rocks and maybe a bit of ’zard blaze.

I du

I can’t believe I met one of the Marked Ones! I almost want to scream it out loud. No one back in the village would ever believe me. They’re the people of myths and legends. Not myth. Not legend. Real. Just like my mother said.

The fire’s dying so I stir it up, cast a few prickler skins on it, cook up a swatch of meat. I eat slowly, afraid my stomach’ll reject the heavy food after going without for so long. It stays down and I cover the fire and smoke with sand ’fore I leave.

Everything hurts, but a few sips of Feve’s tea takes away most of the pain—or at least enough of it that I can walk again. Instinctively, I shove a hand in my pocket and feel for my knife. It’s there. I pull it out, remove it from its sheath, examine it. Clean and shiny—not one speck of Cotee blood on it. Another gift from Feve. If I ignore the fact that he had to stick his hand in my pocket to put the knife back, I almost feel warm from the gesture.

Everything I’ve seen from Feve certainly changes my perspective on the Marked Ones, ’specially now that I know my mother’s true love was the one who started the tribe in the first place. Maybe they’re not so scary and violent and ca