“Me, too,” Circ says. “And that’s what we did at first. Surveyed the border, looked for tracks and evidence that anyone might’ve crossed over from our land to the Killers’.”
“Did you find anything?” I ask, prying his fingers offa mine. I don’t want to, but his grip is so tight my brittler’n-scrubgrass fingers are starting to ache.
“Sort of,” he says. “There were human footprints all right, coming right in from Killer territory to Heater land, as if one of our people had gone over there to cause trouble and then come back. But the strange thing was that there were no prints going in the other direction.”
A dull throb starts in my slinged arm. “It’s been windy. The tracks mighta just been smoothed over,” I say.
“Maybe,” he says. “And we thought that too, but some of the tracks coming in were deep. They were made with someone wearing something on their feet that none of us had ever seen before. Not moccasins, that’s for sure.”
“Not Heaters,” I murmur, holding my bad arm gingerly.
He shakes his head. “Someone else. We didn’t want to waste the mission, come back empty handed, so we went over the border, not to cause trouble with the Killers, but to see if we could find anything to point us to the cause of their invasion. There were all kinds of tracks over there made by someone else, not Heaters. We found a whole pile of tug bones, too, nice and neat and organized. Someone was hunting.”
“Circ, I gotta tell you something too.” I tell him what I overheard my father and Luger talking about.
“It makes sense,” he says. “If it was the Glassies riling the Killers up, tricking them into thinking we’d come onto their land, then they’d follow it up with an attack of their own. You know, now that we’re weakened.”
“What about the Icers?” I ask.
“I don’t know anything about any of that. We’ll probably never know.” That might be good enough for Circ, but it’s not for me. Call it curiosity or just plain silliness, but if we’re ’bout to be invaded by foreigners, I wanna know the whole picture.
“I’m going back to Confinement,” I say.
“What? Why would you do that?” Circ turns to face me.
“I gotta know what’s going on,” I say.
“If you sneak up there and try to follow the prisoners to wherever they’re working every night, your father will notice you’re gone. There’s no way you’ll get away with it.” Circ’s right. I can sneak away for one thumb of sun movement, maybe two, but to carry out a plan like this it’ll take more’n five. The snapper’ll be waiting when I come back. If I’m lucky that’s all that’ll be waiting.
“I’m not sneaking there,” I say, a plan coming together in my mind. “I’m going back in my cage.”
~~~
Circ tries to talk me outta it, but I can be as stubborn as a Totter who won’t eat his evening stew. For some reason I get my head set on doing this thing, and I can’t think about anything else until I do it.
Before we part ways, he tells me not to do anything stupid until we talk again. I tell him I’ll think about it.
When I burst through the door I know I’m in for it. I ain’t late for dinner, or shy of my chores, or late on my Learning projects, but something’s astir. My mother won’t look at me, just stares at the pot of stew she’s stirring like it might hold the meaning of life on its bubbling surface.
My Call-Mother and Call-Siblings turn away from me, huddle together and take turns tying knots in a ball of string.
Father glares. “Where’ve you been?” he demands, ’fore I have a chance to gather my thoughts or figure out what’s going on.
“Out,” I say. It’s not a lie, but it’s not what he’s looking for either.
“Don’t toy with me, Youngling!” he snarls. “I saw you go off with that boy.”
“His name’s Circ,” I say. “You’ve known him since we was kids.” I’m being bolder and feeling bolder’n ever before. Between me and my mother, we’re probably really getting on his nerves.
“I know who he is. Playing with him as a Totter and Midder was fine,” he says. What’s he playing at?
“But now?” I say.
He strides forward, breathing so heavy I can feel it waft off my face. His breath smells like spicy tug jerky. My stomach rumbles. Shut up! I tell it. This is not the time.
“Listen to me carefully because I’ll only say this once more. I will not have my Pre-Bearer daughter running around with some Youngling boy like a little shilt.”
My blood’s boiling, all bubbly and hot, not too different’n my mother’s stew. I’m sweating all over and I know my face is glistening with moisture and heat. No hiding my anger this time. “It’s not like that!” I scream, turning to run back outside, away from this place, from this man, from the creature who refuses to call me by the name he gave me when I was born.
He grabs my arm, hard enough to bruise, whips me ’round. My eyes are glued to his white-knuckled grip, seeing as much as feeling the strength in him. He might be older’n durt, but he ain’t caught the Fire yet, ain’t weak in the least. I can’t fight him with my runty body.
My only chance is to use my mind.
Chapter Sixteen
My father’s message was as dark and mottled as the purple-black-blue five-fingered bruise he left in the flesh of my arm: I see Circ again and it’s another trip to Confinement for me.
My plan is on track.
I lie in bed thinking. If I can get back to Confinement I’ll be able to find out what the scorch is going on. Then maybe me and Circ can come up with a way to stop it. Whatever it is, my father’s got his fist clamped on things tighter’n a butcher about to castrate a dead tug. Circ may not approve of my plan, but he’ll have no choice but to go along with it once it’s in motion.
When my father’s breathing from behind his curtain grows heavy and deep, I throw back my tugskin covering and tiptoe for the door, sparing only a second or two to slip on my moccasins. I ease the door open a crack, praying for silence, and then slide through. Escape! I think. There’s something satisfying and exciting about sneaking out at night. Maybe it’s ’cause no one’s telling me what to do, or where to go, or what my duty is. Or maybe it’s just ’cause I like being a bit rebellious every now and again.
Everything’s blacker’n the inside of a tug’s stomach, ’cept for the sky, which is aglow with hovering fireflies—the stars. To scare me when I was a Totter, Skye used to tell me that night came when a gigantic monster stood in front of the sun, blocking its light and casting a mammoth shadow over everything. She made me scared of the dark for years, until I was a Midder. Now I’m glad for the big ol’ monster’s shadow. It hides my movements.
I sneak my way through the Greynote huts, peeking ’round corners and stopping to listen for footsteps or voices every coupla steps. The village is silent. A ghost town. Everyone sleeping, or at least pretending to. When I get to the last row of huts I cut to the right, purposefully avoiding the village center and the fire pit. There’re almost always insomniacs there, drinking the night away, stirring the fire up and telling war stories. Hunts gone bad, Hunts gone good, and everything in between.
I’m nearly out of the Greynote block when the last hut’s door swings open right in front of my face. I’m behind it, hidden, but whoever opened it is gonna close it any second and they’ll surely see me. There’s no time to think, to run, to do much of anything, so I drop. Flat on my stomach. Like a worm, ’cept without the wriggling. Just stay still, quiet, not even breathing.
The door shuts and whoever’s there makes a sorta groaning noise, but not like he’s in pain. Come to think of it, it’s more like a sigh, like of relief. I risk a breath and a peek up. Too dark to see anything ’cept the outline of a man, which means he probably won’t see me either, unless he happens to look directly down, or trips on me.