Fire Country

My mother, who’s at the table cutting something, fresh prickler probably, looks up when I enter.

“Siena, where in the name of the sun goddess have you been?” she says, standing and navigating past my father.

Seeing my mother’s worried face, her eyes every bit as chestnut as mine, free of lines and wrinkles, as if she’s still a Youngling, brings hot tears to my eyes. All the fear of my father’s wrath slips away in an instant, replaced by the desire to act like a Totter, to make myself smaller’n a burrow mouse, to let my mother hold me and sing me soft lullabies. But I know that’s just a child’s dream. My father’s only getting started.

“I was washing up at the watering hole,” I say, blinking away the tears as quickly as they spring up. She puts her arms around me and pulls my head into her chest, which only makes things worse. I’m choking now, sobbing, and I feel the warmth of a tear from each eye roll down my cheeks. It’s like the memories of all the awful things that happened today have melted away, dripping from my tear ducts.

“You could have washed up here,” she purrs. “We were worried about you.” She pauses, seems to think for a second. “I was worried about you.” I understand her change in word choice. My father worried? Not a chance. If I were dragged away by yellow-eyed Killers in the middle of the night, he’d be thinking about what message to give to the rest of the village to prevent panic, not worrying about my wellbeing. I lick my lips, which taste of salt and well-water. It’s like the terrible events of the day are suddenly no more’n pesky springbugs, and I’m able to swat them away using only my mind. All that matters is the fact that my father doesn’t give a blaze about me.

“I’m sorry, Mother,” I say quietly, pushing her away with both hands.

Her dark brows are creased like a V, her lips a tight line. Don’t, she mouths.

I ignore her, face my father, whose back is to me. “Want to hear about my day, Father?” I say, scorpion poison in my tone.

His hands, which are clenched at his side, open, and then close again, making fists so tight that his knuckles are blotched with red and white. His shoulders rise and fall with heavy breaths. I don’t know what’s gotten into me, but I just can’t take it anymore. My bones hurt from a day shoveling blaze. My ribs ache in a dozen places, where Hawk kicked me. And my pride? Well, I guess that’s the only thing that ain’t hurt, ’cause I never had any in the first place.

“Let’s see,” I say, tapping my teeth with a finger, “where should I start? With getting punished or getting the blaze kicked out of me by another Youngling?”

“I know all about your day,” Father says, turning sharply. Although I can feel the hot rush of anger coursing through my veins, the look on his face—twisted and gnarled, like he’s not thirty two, but forty two—makes me shrink back. It’s as hot as scorch in our hut, but a shiver runs down my spine. This man is but a shadow of the father I once knew: the father who sat me on his knees and bumped them up and down while I squealed with laughter; the father who smiled bigger’n the desert when I came home from Learning holding the Smooth Stone, awarded to the best Midder student; the father who held my hand and confronted Midder Vena when she struck me in the arm. No, the man standing ’fore me ain’t the man who did any of those things.

He steps forward and I step back, but my spine bangs against the door, sending needles through my ribs. “Do you know how embarrassing today was for me?” he asks. “First I get called out of a Greynote meeting so Teacher Mas can inform me that you’ve been given Shovel Duty for the fourth time this full moon. Then Hawk and his father show up at my door to tell me how you and Circ jumped him and broke his nose. These are not small things, Siena!” His voice is the bellow of a tug, and I have the sudden urge to squeeze my eyes shut and curl up into a ball in the corner.

“I didn’t…we didn’t…” My voice is the squeak of a burrow mouse, barely audible above the echoes of my father’s accusations.

“You didn’t what?” he spits.

“We were just defending ourselves,” I cry.

“I will not have you lie to me, Youngling!” he roars. “I’m on the verge of becoming the Head Greynote. How do you think it looks when I can’t even control my own daughter? Do you think the people will trust me to lead them?”

His words must sting my cheeks, ’cause I feel them warming up. “But it wasn’t my faul—”

“Excuses! That’s all I ever get from you, Siena. You think I give you a hard time to be mean?” Uh…yeah? “No! I do it because I want you to be safe, to grow up and have a family. You’re less than a year from the Call and you can’t even take responsibility for your own actions. How do you expect to raise a child?”

“Maybe I don’t want a child!” I scream. I slap a hand over my mouth, right away regretting my words. But the hand is a moment too late ’cause I’ve already said it, have already admitted what most every Youngling girl thinks. And yet, for some reason, saying it is unforgivable.

At first there’s silence, everyone just staring at me, my father’s eyes as big as my mother’s favorite firepan. His lips open and I dread what he’ll say. As if realizing my apprehension, he pauses, runs his tongue along his upper teeth, drawing out the moment, then finally speaks. “No daughter of mine is above the Law. You will learn your duties, one way or the other. If I have to throw you in Confinement, I will. It’s for your own good.”

Confinement? But that’s for bad people—people who break the Law. “I haven’t done anything wrong,” I say. “You wouldn’t.” I try to say the last bit with as much conviction as I can muster, but even as I speak it I know it’s not true. He would. He’d do anything if he thought it’d help maintain our way of life. Even throw his own daughter in prison.

“Try me,” he says, his eyes penetrating mine like darts. “Woman, get my snapper.”

His last command is to my mother, who’s frozen as still as a prickler. She’s watching me, her face full of something I can’t identify. A hint of sadness, maybe. But there’s something else, too, something harder, like stone, noticeable only in her eyes, which don’t match up with the rest of her face. Save me, I think as hard as I can in her direction.

“My snapper!” my father yells. “Now!”

The steel in her eyes disappears and I know she didn’t hear my silent plea. Hidden beneath her dress, her feet carry her across the room and behind the barrier, where my father spends the night with each of his wives on a rotational basis, although lately I’ve noticed Sari’s there at least two out of every three nights. I know it’s just the way of my people, but seeing my mother get ignored for Sari, who I barely know, grizzes me off more’n anything.

A moment later she reappears, a black swatch of leather dangling from her hand. At one end is a handle, which wraps around my father’s palm for greater grip, and at the other side it splits into ten strips, each of which comes to a knot intended to add a bit of sting to each snap. The teeth of the snapper my father calls them.

Her eyes on the floor, my mother hands it to him.

Chapter Five

In Learning they told us about a time when men and women were gods and goddesses, and lived until they were sixty, seventy, even eighty. Some of the kids even said their parents told them people used to live until they were ninety or, in rare cases, a hundred, which I think is a bunch of tugblaze. I draw the line at a hundred.

But that was all before the rogue god, Meteor, attacked us. Going against the sun and moon goddess, Meteor snuck by and gave the earth a real beating, fists and feet and head swirling, knocking over mountains and drying up rivers and wiping out most of the tribes. When Teacher told the story, we were riveted to our seats. It was the first time he had all our attention at once. When he got to the part about how the first Heater crawled out of their hiding spots, in caves and deep pits, we cheered and clapped our hands. They were survivors, just like us. We don’t know where the Icers came from, but they musta survived Meteor, too.