Fire Country

I look back and it’s Wilde, looking anything but ordinary now. Under the firelight her eyes are reddish orange and her hair is streaked with dancing bursts of light. Her skin is warm brown and perfect. She’s perfect, like a god fallen from the sky. How I ever thought she looked average is beyond me.

“I’m just, uh, gotta go to the bathroom,” I lie.

“Drank too much fire juice?” she says.

“Yeah, way too much.”

“You seem fine to me,” she says. A beautiful smile flashes across her face and she grabs me by both hands, pulling me back into the spectacular fray. Three other Wildes surround me, pulling at my britches and shirt, tearing the cloth away. No, no, no, no, no! Stop, no! In my head I’m screaming, but nothing’s coming outta my mouth ’cause I’m on the verge of tears. I know how this’ll go down. The laughter, the names, the pointing. When they see my tent-pole arms and scrubgrass legs the music’ll stop. Everything’ll stop and I’ll be run outta the canyon.

Alone and friendless again.

I feel a rush of air against my legs, my torso, my arms.

I close my eyes. It’s over. The acceptance, the new friends, the freedom.

Someone grabs my hand, spins me ’round, laughing, laughing, laughing…but not at me. At life, at dancing. I open my eyes.

My legs and arms and stomach are, in fact, bare. It feels weird, being so exposed in front of so many people, like a nightmare. But no one’s laughing or staring or shouting names at me. They’re looking at me, yeah, the same way they’re looking at everyone else. Smiles in their eyes and on their cheeks and in their lips.

I dance.

~~~

“Uhhhh,” someone groans. My eyes flash open. Skye. She’s sprawled out next to me, clutching at her head.

“Skye, what is it? What’s the matter?” I say. I scramble to my knees and hover over her.

“Too much burnin’ fire juice,” she moans.

The laugh springs out of my throat ’fore I can stop it.

“Not searin’ fu

I put a hand over my mouth to stifle another laugh. It kind of is fu

“Stupid,” she says, rolling over. “I burnin’ do it every time there’s a welcome party. And every time I say I won’t do it the next time.”

I shake my head. Again I think how she ain’t the sister that disappeared. She’s changed and not all in good ways—but not all in bad either. She’s independent, making her own decisions, paying for the bad ones with fire juice headaches.

“I’m go

“Wake me up in a quarter full moon,” Skye mumbles.

The camp is already bustling when I crawl outta our tent. Any evidence of the party from the night ’fore’s been hauled away, cleaned up. I stand and feel the gentle touch of air on my skin. I gasp, duck back down, hug my knees. I’m practically naked!

It all comes back to me. The ripping of clothes, the shedding of skin, so to speak. In the wildness of the night, of the music and dance, my inhibitions fell away and I almost felt secure in my own Scrawny body. But now, in the stark light of the morning, I feel like a fool for thinking I’ll be anything but a Weakling. ’Specially here. ’Specially among these strong girls.

I start to push back into my tent to find something to cover up with, when someone grabs me from behind. “Not so fast,” the familiar voice says, using the same words as last night.

Grudgingly, I back out, rise unsteadily to my feet, hug myself. Wilde stands ’fore me, smiling. She’s normal again. I mean, she’s still strong and has pretty features, but gone is the night magic that made me think of her as a god.

“You look beautiful like that,” she says. “Like one of us.”

I wait for the punch line. More like half of one of us! Or maybe, As beautiful as a tug leg! Those I’ve heard ’fore.

Instead, she says, “C’mon,” and grabs my hand. Unprepared for the movement, I stumble, but Wilde holds me up, doesn’t laugh, just keeps pulling me along. I don’t know what to say so I keep my mouth shut.

She leads me to the central fire pit and I expect her to stop, to sit me amongst t’other new Wildes, who are in a tight cluster, eating and talking, but she pulls me past them. When I see Lara she waves, and I try to flash a confident smile, but I think it comes across crooked and nervous.

When we exit the camp, Wilde releases my hand and slows to let me catch up. The canyon walls narrow and squeeze us closer together. “Do you know why we don’t eat meat?” she asks.

I stare forward, wracking my brain. I don’t think Skye mentioned why and I didn’t think to ask. “’Cause animals are hard to catch?” I guess, remembering back to my pathetic attempts at the ’zards and burrow mice.

She laughs and it reminds me of rain falling at night when I’m trying to sleep, soft and soothing, like a natural lullaby. “Trust me, the Wildes are more than capable of Hunting if we choose to,” she says.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“It’s okay,” she says. “You apologize too much. There’s no need for that here. We all make mistakes, but we learn from them.” Her words make me relax, my shoulders slumping. For a moment I forget that I’ve hardly got any clothes on.

“Sorry, I won’t apologize anymore,” I say. “Sorry, I just did it again.”

“And again,” she says. Rain falls although the sky is clear. “No, the reason we don’t eat meat is because we don’t want to rely on it. The village is so reliant on the success of the Hunters, on the ebbs and flows of the tug hurds. One day the Hunters won’t find the tug, because they’ll be gone. They’ll vanish, their numbers decimated by the harshness of fire country or the Killers or by the Hunters’ own hands. But we’ll survive because we’re independent. We grow our own food, more than enough to satisfy every hungry mouth. We’re protected from the summer fires in our haven. We build our tents from things that grow, braided plants. Our beds are nests of grass, easily replenished every spring. We’re smart. We’re capable.”

Her words are like a poem that speaks straight to my heart, but right away I see the flaw. “Yeah, but you rely on the village to replenish your numbers. If they die, you die, too.” I’m still talking ’bout them as if I’m not one of the Wildes, but I know I am. I have no place else to go.

“You ask a lot of questions,” she says, stopping. We’re directly below the lovers’ hands, the desert framed by the rock formation. The prickler fields beckon to us, green and full of hope.

I look her in the eyes. “That wasn’t a question,” I say.

She smiles. “We do rely on the Heaters,” she says. “One day the Fire will catch up with us and we’ll start to die. If there’re no Heaters to provide us with runaway girls…” Her voice trails off and her smile vanishes like a snake caught by a vulture out in the open.

“Goodbye Wildes,” I say.

“Yes,” she admits. “But you’ve given us hope.”

It doesn’t take a hut builder to know what she’s talking ’bout. “The Cure.”

“Exactly.”

“My father won’t give it up. Even if we tell people ’bout it, they won’t believe us. We’re outcasts, ferals, freaks.” She seems taken aback by my honesty, but I don’t stop. “At least that’s what the villagers think. And we have no proof ’bout the Cure, ’cept what my mother told me. And she’s dead.” My voice breaks on the word and I hafta take a deep swallow and blink furiously to keep my composure.

“It’s not your father I’m thinking of,” Wilde says. “I’m thinking bigger.”

I angle my head and frown. It clicks. “You mean…”

She nods. She wants to go straight to the Icies.

“Can I ask you something?” I say, taking advantage of the situation.

She nods. “Hit me,” she says, and I almost laugh ’cause I think of Skye saying almost the same thing but in a completely different context.

“You know the Marked leaders, right?”