The Sun Dwellers

It’s a good point, but still…

“Something just doesn’t smell right,” I say, and we both crack up, but then just as quickly fall over gagging from the thick, putrid latrine air.

“Let’s get this over with, then we can talk,” Circ says, covering his mouth and nose with a hand.

I smile behind my own hand. “Thanks for helping me with Blaze Craze,” I say.

“Just promise me you’ll stop daydreaming in class.” He plucks his shoes off with his spare hand, one at a time, and then pulls his thin white shirt over his head. I’ve seen him shirtless a thousand times, from Totter to Midder to Youngling, but this time I force myself to look closer, because of what all the other Youngling girls are saying about him. Circ is so smoky. What I wouldn’t give for five minutes with Circ behind the border tents. You’re close with Circ, aren’t you, Siena? Could you give him a message for me? Of course I say I will, but I never do. If they don’t have the guts to say whatever they want to right to his face, then they’re not good enough for him. Plus, the thought of Circ behind the border tents with some shilty Youngling makes me a bit queasy.

Anyway, I try to see Circ from their perspective, just this one time. To call his skin sun-kissed would be the understatement of the year, like calling a tug “Sort of big,” or a Killer “Kind of dangerous.” It’s like the sun is infused in the very pigment of his skin, leaving him golden brown and radiant. He’s strong, too. Almost as strong as iron, his stomach flat and hard, his chest and arms cut like stone. But he’s always been this way, hasn’t he? Still staring at his torso, present day Circ fades from my vision and is replaced with images of him growing up. Circ as a Totter, five-years-old, small and bit pudgy in his stomach, arms and face; Circ turning eight and becoming a Midder, less chubby but still awkward-looking, with too-long arms and legs; Circ at twelve, a full-fledged Youngling, much taller and ski

The images fade and Circ stares at me. “What?” he says.

“Uh, nothing,” I say, shaking my head and wondering when Circ became so smoky. It’s like with every passing year he became more and more capable, while I stayed just as useless as ever. He’s good at everything, from hunting to feetball to Learning. And all I’m good at is daydreaming and getting in trouble. He’s smoky, and as my nickname suggests, I’m scrawny.

“You were daydreaming again, weren’t you?” His words are accusing but his tone and expression is as light as the brambleweeds that tumble and bounce across the desert.

“You caught me,” I mumble through my hand.

I see his grin creep around the edges of his fingers. He stands up and offers a hand. “Care to shovel some blaze with me, my lady?”

Despite my self-pitying thoughts, he manages to cheer me up, and I take his hand, laughing. He pulls me up, hands me a shovel. While I carry my shovel, Circ wheels a pushbarrow, and we follow our noses toward the stench, which becomes more and more unbearable with each step. You’ve done this before, I remind myself. You just have to get used to the smell again.

If the smell is bad, the heat is unbearable. Although the heart of the summer is four months distant, you couldn’t tell it by the weather. The air is as thick as ‘zard soup, full of so much moisture that your skin bleeds sweat the moment you step from the shade, as if you’ve just taken a dip in the watering hole. All around us is flat, sandy desert, which radiates the heat like the embers of a dying cook fire. With summer nipping at our heels and winter approaching, almost everything is dead, the long strands of desert wildgrass having been burned away months earlier. A few lonely pricklers continue to thwart death, turned brown in the sun, but rising stalwart from the desert; we call them the plant of the gods for a reason, bearing milk even in the harshest conditions. Without them, my people might not survive the winter.

We reach the edge of the blaze pit and look down. It’s a real mess, as if no one’s been here to shovel it for weeks, maybe even months. It’s going to be a long afternoon.

“Maybe we can just cover it with durt,” I say hopefully.

Circ gives me a look. “Don’t be such a shanker—you know it’s not full yet.”

“I’m not a shanker!” I protest.

“Well, you sure sound like one,” Circ says, gri

Determined to prove him wrong, I roll up my dress and tie it off at the side, and then clamber down the side of the pit, feeling the blaze squish under the tread of my bare feet. Gross. Some even slips between my toes. The smell is all around me now, a brownish haze rising up as the collective crap of our entire village cooks under the watchful eye of the hot afternoon sun. Not a pleasant sight.

Gritting my teeth, I start shoveling. The goal is to even it out, move the blaze that’s around the edges to the center. You see, people come and dump their family’s blaze into this pit, but they’re sure as scorch not go

Anyway, I get right into it, heaping the scoop of my shovel full of stinky muck and tossing it as far toward the center as I can get it. Some of it splatters my clothes, but that’s inevitable, so I don’t give it another thought. Clothes can be cleaned, but the job’s not go

A moment later Circ’s beside me, and within two scoops, his bare chest is glistening with a thin sheen of sweat that reflects the light into my eyes like thousands of sparkling diamonds. Every once in a while, one of us gags, our throats instinctively closing up to prevent any more of the blaze haze from penetrating our lungs. Can a person die of excessive blaze fume inhalation? With three more Shovel Duty afternoons to come, I’m certainly go

Scoop, shovel, gag, repeat.

It goes on like that for an hour, neither of us talking, not because we don’t want to, but because we can’t without choking. At some point I become immune to the smell, but I know it’s still there, like an invisible force lying in wait for its next victim. My supposedly nonexistent muscles are all twisted up, as if a hand is inside my skin, grabbing and squeezing and pounding away. Each shovelful gets smaller and smaller, until there’s almost no point in scooping so I stop, try to jab the shovel in the blaze so it stands upright, but I don’t do it hard enough and it just falls over.

Circ stops, too, and looks at me, a smile playing on his lips. “You look like blaze,” he says, full on laughing now. I feel like blaze, too, but I won’t say that.

Instead, I get ready to tell him the same thing, but then I notice: although his legs are spattered and dotted with brown gunk, from the knees up he’s spotless; he’s dripping beads of sweat like the spring rains have come early, but he doesn’t look tired; his ta

“Sorry, I didn’t mean—I was just joking around,” Circ says.

My eyes flick to his. How does he know what I’m feeling? Does he know what I see as I look at him, that I see him as perfect? I realize I’m frowning.