“Sear it all to scorch!” Keep growls. “We got another diver. Put ’im with ter others.”
Raja lifts his head, looks at Keep. “I really think we should—”
“Yer not ’ere to think,” Keep says. “Put ’im with ter others, or I put a pointer through yer skull.”
Raja just stares at Keep, as if he’s considering the offer, but then stumbles over to the guy on the ground. I see him whisper something to him, and the guy’s eyes flash open for a moment, but then close again. There’s defeat on his face, which is ghostly white under the moonglow. Too tired to fight on. Too tired to chop trees. Too tired to live.
Another prisoner comes over and helps Raja carry him out into the desert. I shrink back, keeping the tree between me and them, unable to tear my gaze away from the prisoner’s body. They carry him to an area littered with broken white-painted branches and round sun-bleached rocks. I hadn’t noticed them ’fore, but now that I see the strange white objects, they look so familiar, as if I’ve seen something like them ’fore. “Drop ’im!” Keep orders.
Facing away from Keep, Raja makes a face, ignores the order, lowers the body gently to the earth amongst the sticks and stones, as if it’s some sort of altar. Touches the man’s face gently. Leaves him there.
Dead under the moonglow.
~~~
The men are chopping again, distracted, and I wanna see what’s so familiar ’bout the objects littered around the now-dead prisoner. I got no desire to be near a dead body—nuh uh, no thanks—but something about the white branches and stones draw me to them.
I’m so close to the working men now that each chop, chop, chop goes straight into my head, as if they’re chopping at me and not the trees. My head starts to hurt.
Keeping my eyes on Keep, who’s walking around shouting “encouragement” to the workers—like “Hurry it up or I’s fixing ter beat the livin’ scorch outta yers!” or “Don’t make me put a pointer through yer brain, tugs!”—I reach the body. Fixing one eye on Keep, I aim my other eye at the white objects.
Some of them are strangely curved, while others are stick-straight, with knobs on the ends. The rocks are smooth, almost circular but not quite. Odd. The wind breathes a heavy gust and one of the rocks rolls toward me, clattering slightly on the hard ground. When it turns it’s looking at me. Right at me. With sunken, eaten-away eyes.
Not a stone—a skull. Not branches—bones. This ain’t no altar, no shrine. This is a graveyard.
Suddenly I’m gasping for air, shaking so hard I can’t control it, trying—desperately trying—to turn away from the image of death that stands before me, but I can’t, can’t, like I’m being sucked in by the hollowed out eyes of the skull picked clean by the vultures and Cotees and whatever other animals might live in the no-man’s-land between fire country and ice country.
Grabbing my head with my hand, I force it away from the desert, bury it into the side of a tree, still shaking—might never stop shaking—hot tears springing up and rolling down my cheeks. Silently sobbing. The lifers are sent here to work. And they’re sent here to die.
At my feet the leaves look less like dried tree blossoms’n like curled, skeletonized hands chopped off at the wrists.
I shake, shake, shake some more, my fingers like claws, pulling at my hair, wiping away my tears, rubbing moisture on my dress.
A CRASH! that's startlingly close pulls me out of the shock caused by the skeletons. The next round of trees is falling. With each one, my mind clears a little and wrests a bit of control from my emotions. What’s done is done. These people are dead. I gotta move forward, think of how to help the ones that’re still alive.
I gotta think.
I’s framed. Raja’s words. If he’s telling the truth—which I think he is—then this ain’t just a ’spiracy. This is murder, plain and simple.
And who’s behind it all? Raja says he was framed by a Greynote. And the Head of the Greynotes is…
…my father.
Can’t be him. Father’s mean and nasty and has a temper a mile wide, but a killer? He’s always talking ’bout how it’s my duty to Bear, how we need to obey the Laws to ensure the survival of our people, the Heaters. But how’re we gonna survive if we’re framing and murdering our own? So it’s probably some of t’other Greynotes, going behind his back, usurping his authority. Right?
I hear a new voice, unlike the others, both in tone and language. Wiping away a lingering tear, I ease around the tree to check things out.
There’s a guy, dressed in heavy white skins, all draped over him like he’s wearing blankets. Black, leather boots rise all the way to his knees. He’s got a hat on too, furry with a tail on it. Like no one I’ve ever seen ’fore. His face is shrouded under a beard so thick there could be a whole family of burrow mice living in it. I know right away what he is:
An Icer.
Come from high in the mountains, he’s talking to Keep. “Your workers are too freezin’ slow,” he says, his words clipped and precise. I ain’t never heard anyone talk like that. I scan the workers for something to clue me in as to what freezin’ mean, but don’t see anything, so I got no clue what he’s going on ’bout.
“They’s tired. Hungry,” Keep says. “We need more food fer ’em. Our people are starvin’”
“You’ll get your food. But tell Roan this: if we don’t get more production out of your men, we’ll cut off the supply of wood and meat. Mark my words.”
“I’ll tell ’im,” Keep says. “When’ll we git ter food?”
The Icer folds his arms across his broad chest. “Tomorrow. It’s a sacred day. First day of winter. We’ll not have your men working on our land on a sacred day. But they can come to collect the meat and trees.”
“We’ll be ’ere,” Keep says.
~~~
It feels like my eyes just closed when I see light on t’other side of their lids.
Morning’s come faster’n a wildfire. And with it, a roaring, scattering of thoughts in my overloaded brain, as if the windstorm from last night is inside me. Everything ’bout last night feels like a dream—but I know it ain’t. I saw what I saw. I heard what I heard. And now I want what I want. Which is answers.
I gotta talk to Raja, but he won’t be too happy if I wake him up on so little sleep. So, instead, I wait patiently for him to awake on his own, enjoying the sunrise.
It’s a good one, too, a burst of orange and red over the horizon, casting shimmery beams of light almost through the puffy yellow clouds that dot the sky. And just ’fore the outline of the sun goddess’s eye appears, there’s a burst of color. Not just the usual reds and oranges and yellows, but a flash of blue and green, too, so bright and beautiful that my heart skips a beat as I wonder at the powers that watch over us. The blue in particular reminds me of something Teacher once told us. He said the sky used to be all blue, not red like it is now. The red only came at sunrise and sunset. All us Younglings laughed behind his back after Learning, saying how Teacher’d lost his rocks, gone wooloo. None of us believed him.
But somehow, on this morning and seeing that burst of blue, I can almost picture the sky being all blue. I’d rather the sky be purple with pink polka dots, Perry comments.
“I bet you would,” I mutter, silently reminding myself how silly it is to be talking to a prickler. But, with Raja sleeping like a pre-Totter, Perry’s all I got.
Already I’m tired of waiting for Raja. I was up every bit as late as him, maybe later. I heard him come in, lie down, his breathing get heavy. He was bone-weary and slept right away. Me, I was exhausted, but took ages to doze off, what with all my rambling thoughts and ideas spinning and dancing through my mind.
Bones and skulls. I shiver, although, back in fire country I’m nothing but warm.