Ice Country

Heaters. What a day. Maybe I should lose atcards more often.

One of them speaks, using language that’s thesame as ours, but sounds so different coming from his mouth, likeevery word’s rounder and longer. “I don’t recognize these twobaggards,” he says, motioning to Buff and me.

“They’re new. Today,” Abe says.

The Heater nods, says, “Got a full load ofsearin’ tugmeat and at least ten bags o’ ’zard niblets. The king’sfavorite.”

“That it?” Abe asks.

“Yeah,” the other Heater says. He’s tallerthan the first, but every bit as strong-looking. “Might be a couplamore months ’fore we have any special cargo.”

I look at Abe, wait for him to question whatthe brown guy means by special cargo, but he just shrugs.“Roan’s paid up that long anyway,” he says. “He’ll get his herbseither way.”

Herbs? What are these guys talkingabout? Tugmeat and ’zards I understand. Fire country delicacies. Nobig deal. The king probably gets them delivered all the time. Butthe other stuff—huh?

I glance at Buff, whose cheek is raised. He’sas confused as I am.

~~~

I come home in the dark with half a day’s payand a stiff back. Although the trip to the border was fun andeasy—what with the high-quality slider strapped to my feet—thejaunt back to the top of the mountain was long and grueling,especially because we were carrying huge packs of meat on ourbacks, along with our sliders. Hightower took about twice as muchas everyone else though, so that helped quite a lot. Like Abe said,he’s handy to have around.

We dropped it off to a guy with a cart, justoutside the palace walls. Abe told us good work and that the nextjob wouldn’t be for three days, so we should rest up and meet himback at the same place at dawn. And that was that. On account ofbeing so icin’ exhausted, Buff and I barely said a word to eachother as we walked back to the Brown District. Chill, I don’t eventhink I’d be in the mood to fight anyone, even if such anopportunity arose.

But still, I can’t complain. As far as I’mconcerned, I’ve got the best job in the world.

Pausing a moment in front of our door, Istomp the snow off my boots and scrape the ice and muck off myshiny new slider. When I push through the door and duck inside, Ifeel a warm blast of heat from a healthy fire. Although it remindsme of the heat of the sun down at the border, it’s not the same.Nothing will ever be the same.

“Welcome back, Brother.” Wes is home already,having worked the dayshift, a smile plastered on his face as ifhe’s been like that all evening, just waiting for me. It’s a biggersmile than a new job warrants…

“What?” I say, somewhat rudely.

Wes strides over, claps me on the back. Iflinch, suddenly feeling hot in my multi-layered getup. “Take alook,” he says.

“Take a look at wha—”

He cuts me off with a hand in the air,pointing.

I look at him strangely, then follow hisgesture over to where—

I gasp. This has to be a joke. For weeks andweeks, months and months, when I came home from wherever I’d been,Wes would usually be out working, and Mother, well, she’d be in thesame ice-powder-induced stupor, usually rocking on the floor,babbling about how the things in the walls were creeping in on her,or some such rot.

But not tonight.

Tonight she sits upright, in a chair. She’sstill gazing into the fire, as if it might have beautiful pictureswithin the folds of its flames, but she’s not babbling. In fact,the sound coming out of her mouth brings back memories of some ofthe best times of my life, back when we were a family—me and Wesand Joles and Mother and Father. None of us staying with neighbors.None of us addicted to ice. None of us dead. A real family.

She’s humming.

It’s a tune she used to hum to us beforesleep, when our eyelids were so heavy I swore there were boulderstied onto and hanging from them. Countless nights my last memorywas of her smiling face, just hum-hum-humming us to sleep.

I can feel the smile that lights up my face,every bit as big as Wes’s, every bit as heartfelt. “What happened?”I whisper, as if raising my voice might break the spell, melt herback into the addict she became after my father died.

Wes shakes his head, claps me on the backagain. “I’m not sure exactly. I was fixing to head for the mines,you know, shortly after you left. Joles had already scampered backon down the street. Mother was talking, mumbling, what sounded likeher usual rubbish. But when I went to kiss her on the forehead, shelooked at me.”

“She looked at you?” My words areunbelieving.

Wes raises his eyebrows. “I know what you’regetting at, and I swear it’s true. She looked at me, notthrough me. Not like I wasn’t even there. We made eyecontact, and then her mumbles were reasonably coherent—weaksounding, yah—but real words and phrases. Of this world.”

“What’d she say?” I can’t help but to sneakanother peek at her, my mother, who looks and sounds like adifferent person, what with her sitting in a chair and humming anold memory.

“She said she was sorry. She said she neededhelp. She said she loved us.”

“And that was it?”

“Not exactly. She said if you—meaningyou, Dazz—could do it, then she could too. I think yougetting a job inspired her.”

Now it’s my turn to raise my eyebrows. Ifthey only knew. If Mother only knew. How my gambling losses led toa job that I’d swear was a gift from the Heart of the Mountain. Ifshe knew that, would she still have been inspired? Doesn’t matter.Not one bit. What matters is she’s clean for the first time in along time. But there’s a long way to go.

“Any signs of the need?” I ask Wes, who’sback to smiling. His lips curl opposite and he frowns. It’s almostlike he was avoiding the topic. The few times we’ve been able toget Mother clean haven’t worked out so well. The need always comesback, and with it the shakes and the sweats and the cursing and thescratching. And then she gets her hands on some ice, almostmagically, and we’re right back where we started.

This is life after Father.

“Not yet,” Wes says. “I skipped work today towatch her, but I can’t miss again.”

“I’ve got it covered for the next two days,”I say.

“Don’t tell me,” Wes says, and I can see whathe thinks in his narrowed eyes.

“I still got a job,” I say, not getting angryat Wes’s assumption. It was probably a fair one anyway.

Wes frowns. “Then how do you got itcovered?”

“We’ve got two days off,” I say, shrugging.“It’s different than most jobs.”

“I’ll say,” Wes says. “But they’re payingyou?”

He wouldn’t believe me if I told him howmuch. But they took half of it to repay my debts, so what’s leftover seems more reasonable. I show him the silver.

He whistles, high and loud. “That’s for aday?”

I shrug again, give him half. “For food andsuch,” I say.

He grins. “My brother, the working man.”

~~~

Wes thinks five to six days should do thetrick. So I’ll watch her for the next two, then he’ll try to getoff work again for the third, and hopefully I’ll get another coupleof days off to cover the end of her needing period.

But I can’t wait that long to tell Jolie,even if I’m getting her hopes up more than I should.

I’m too excited to even take the time to getwashed up before heading down the road. Neither do I eat anythingbefore I leave. Truth be told, I’m secretly hoping for more ofLooza’s famous stew. Talk about a perfect ending to a perfect day.I never knew having a job could be like this; if I did, I’d havegotten one as soon as I was done with school, when I wasfourteen.

I find myself whistling the same tune Motherwas humming as I stroll along, stepping in deep footprints made bysomeone a lot bigger than me. Not a care in the world.