She pulls me back, her face a red mess, says, “It matters not. We must hurry.”
The perfect crown of hair she created earlier is in shambles, collapsing in broken, wet strands onto my face. I push them away. “Mother, I don’t understand. Hurry where? We hafta tell the Greynotes what happened, that you saved me, that Bart’s an animal. They’ll believe us, they will!”
Mother’s eyebrows drop, her soft wrinkles full of compassion. She never had wrinkles until the Fire came. “This was not the life for your sister,” she says and I startle.
“Skye?” I say. “Skye was taken.”
“No,” she says. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t tell you, couldn’t tell anyone. I sent Skye away from here. To a safe place. She went to live with the Wild Ones.”
Her words don’t make sense. The Wilds? But they’re feral, they’re not civilized, they’re… “Kidnappers,” I say. “They took her.”
“Siena, I know this is a lot to take in, but you have to trust me. You have to go now. Your father, he’s a monster.”
She knows what I know. “Mother, I know, I know, I found out about the agreement with the Icers, how they give us wood and meat and we stay out of ice country, how the prisoners didn’t do anything wrong, how they’re forced to work, ’bout everything. We can tell the people. We can tell them!”
“You don’t know everything,” she says. “Your father, he’ll never get the Fire.”
She’s speaking in riddles. “I don’t understand, Mother. He’s not invincible. The plague’ll take him just like everyone else, just like you.”
“The Icers give him medicine,” she says. “Some kind of herbal drink. It fights the Fire. It’s part of the agreement with them. The most secret part. But I watch him, I see what he does—he can’t hide his treachery from me. We have to go.” She grabs me and pulls me to my feet, hands me a freshly sewn set of Hunter trousers and a shirt. For the first time in my life, I put on something that’s not a dress.
~~~
The night is empty. The rain has stopped as suddenly as it started. Although the distant sounds of frolic and laughter hum from the center of the village, the Call party is like another world, something completely foreign to where we are.
Bart lies inside the tent surrounded by his own blood.
We run.
At least it’s our best attempt at running. My legs are cramped and tight and sorta tingly, both from Bart crushing them beneath him and ’cause of my mother’s words. My father gets a cure for the Fire from the Icers? I have so many questions, like Why don’t the rest of us get the cure? but I know there’s no time. When they find out about Bart, the Greynotes’ll come for us and there’s only one punishment for murder. Life in Confinement. A knife in the back’ll leave no question as to guilt. My mother by actions. Me by association.
My mother’s struggling to run, too, ’cause killing Bart and the Fire have sapped the last of her energy. We cling to each other, hold each other up, four legs and four arms and two hearts, all stuck together in one person. I don’t know where we’re going or what we’ll do when we get there, but I’m happy I’m going there with her.
Like me, she knows the best spot for sneaking out of the village—the point furthest from any guard towers. So that’s it, we’re leaving. Even as I realize it, I know it’s for the best. With Circ gone and her soon to be, I have no reason to stay. The village only carries pain for me now.
“Siena,” my mother says, stopping, breathing hard, leaning on me. “You have to run like you’ve never run before. Southwest, where the river lies dead like a snake and the rocks hold hands like lovers. You have to hurry. Your father, the Hunters…they will come after you.”
“After me?” I say. My heart skips a beat and tears well up when I realize what’s happening. “You’re not coming.”
“I’m dying, Siena. This is my last act of defiance against your father, my last act of love for you. Tomorrow there is only death.”
Rivulets trickle down my cheeks. “No,” I sob, “we can get the cure. If he has it, we’ll find it. We’ll demand he give it to us. I can do it. I can save you.” My body shivers with emotion and my mother pulls me close.
“I’ve tried to find where he keeps it, but it’s too well hidden.” Her words are strong, almost fierce, a far cry from my own shattered utterances. “It only works to prevent the Fire, but it’s useless when you’ve already got it. Siena—”
“No!” I hiss, louder’n I should. “No, you can come with me. We’ll figure out a way.”
“I’m too weak…”
“You’re the strongest person I know.”
“You have to go…”
“I can’t leave you.” My words are a lie, ’cause I know I can and will leave her. ’Cause if I don’t leave, if I don’t go and try to make something of my crumbling life, then her sacrifice’ll have been for nothing. And I can’t live with that.
“Siena, I love you,” she says, pushing me away with all her might, falling to her knees.
“I love you,” I cry, tear-streaked and stumbling, running toward an unknown world of Wilds who don’t kidnap and my sister is one of them.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The night paints pictures with the strange strokes of a devilish artist.
Everything’s different in the dark. The dunes are rolling humps and heads and tails of gargantuan monsters, asleep and heavy. The pricklers stand firm and tall, like soldiers on guard, ready to fight the dune-monsters the moment they awake. The wind is on the verge of visibility, a silent hand that holds the brush, sweeping it in wide arcs that leave the landscape changed with each stroke.
It dries my tears, too. As I circle ’round the northwestern edge of the village, far enough away that to the guardsmen I’ll be little more’n a brambleweed bouncing along the desert, I find my legs. Although I’m scared and sad and bone-weary, I’m not broken. My mother saved me and I won’t waste it.
Southwest, where the river lies dead like a snake and the rocks hold hands like lovers.
Vague directions, but enough to get me started. What’ll happen when I get there, wherever there is? I don’t know. All I know is that my sister left by choice, not against her will like I always thought, like they always told me—and my mother helped her do it. The revelation is huge for me. All of Lara’s talk about girl’s being strong and living the way they want to live was fun and made her who she was, but I never took it that seriously. But knowing my mother and sister were of a similar mind and took real action makes all the difference. It gives me hope.
When I reach the western edge of the village, I stop, look back. Twinkling lights of a raging fire sparkle and dance. I wonder if my mother got caught out or if she made it back to her bed. I wonder if Goola’s discovered Bart yet, swimming in his own dark blood. My sixteen years of existence lie in the village. I look up and Circ winks at me between overlapping shrouds of gray cloud cover.
I turn my back on the village, scuffing my moccasins in the durt just enough to scrape off the dust of my old life.
~~~
I’m barely a half mile southwest of the village when the alarm sounds. They’ve found Bart.
They’ll organize quickly, start the Hunt. This time not for tug—for me. With cries and wind behind me, I lengthen my strides, pick up my pace. Run as fast as I’m truly capable of. The britches my mother made me feel weird and restricting against my skin. But at the same time, they make running so much easier. There’s nothing to swirl ’round my feet, to trip me. Wearing britches makes me feel alive, somehow.