The Earth Dwellers (17 page)

I’m running. Skye and Wilde are, too, I think. Tristan’s the only one who’s still walking, or maybe just standing there, gawking. I don’t know, ’cause I’m too busy crashing into Circ and he’s holding me fiercely, tighter’n a clenched fist, like he was worried I wasn’t coming home at all, regardless of how many pieces I’m in. “Oh, sun goddess,” I breathe, ’cause even Circ’s love can’t bring ’em back. Nothing can.

Feve’s got Skye and Wilde, one in each arm, and it’s the scariest thing in the world to see Wilde so shattered, tears running down her cheeks, clinging to Feve like a wet shirt.

“They killed ’em,” Skye says, and I finally realize she ain’t crying. She’s the only one of us three not crying. “They killed ’em all.” And her words, they’re like the hard, cold ice in the mountains to the north, a home for a people who no longer need it. “It’s time for war.”

~~~

We’re setting in a circle. Lots of other folk are ’ere too, mostly just to listen, to hear the tragedy that Wilde’s recounting. The news from ice country.

I’m leaning into Circ and his arm’s ’round me, and it feels so searin’ good that it feels awful.

’Cause Skye’s got no one to hold her.

’Cept she does, ’cause our younger sister, Jade, is huddled up against her, and you know what? For once, Skye lets her, doesn’t push her away, doesn’t tell her to scram, like she always does if I try to show her affection. And I’m glad for it. So glad.

Feve’s asking questions of Wilde every so often in that low, warm voice of his. He’s got a baby in each arm and his wife, Hela, at his side. Feve the family man. Even after I witnessed it the first time, after we settled in New Wildetown, I could barely believe it. But it’s true, and I was shocked that the dark warrior was a pretty searin’ good father.

The odd one out is Tristan, whose eyes are shooting all ’round like darts, just taking everything in, looking like an alien wearing his mask. Answering any questions that are asked of him, mostly stuff he’s already told us. Where’d you come from? Who are you? Why are you here? Your girlfriend really went inside the Glass City alone? To help us? And you swear you’re not a Glassy? His voice sounds strange through the mask as he answers each one.

He looks so out of place it’s almost funny, and I might laugh if I felt like I could.

But laughter’s just not something any of us got in us right now. Maybe tomorrow.

~~~

When all the questions and the conversating pretty much ends, me and Circ go for a walk. I need to be with him right now. Just him. Even if only for a short time.

He’s got his fingers laced in mine and I’m grizzed at myself for enjoying it so much. My footsteps are heavy and loud, while his are as graceful and lithe as one of the fire dancers who sometimes perform at the evening meal.

“Siena,” he says, his dark brown eyes even darker in the shadows, his skin like night. Under the cloudy sky, he could almost be a Stormer. “Tell me.”

And that’s Circ. Knowing me every searin’ bit as well as I know myself. Knowing when I got something to say and when I don’t.

“I’m afraid I’ll be a hot mess if I try to talk ’bout it,” I say, squeezing his hand harder just to make sure it’s still there.

In less time’n it takes Perry to hurl an insult, Circ’s got me in his arms, carrying me, like I’m some helpless little doll of his.

“Put me the scorch down!” I hiss. “I got two feet like everbody else.”

But he just laughs, goes right on carrying me, and I don’t fight him too hard, ’cause it’s kinda fun and kinda what I need.

We go to the left, into darker darks, through some sorta cave cut into the side of the canyon. I feel us rising…up, up, up…twisting one way, then t’other, Circ’s strong arms holding me like I’m as heavy as a Totter, which ain’t that far from the truth.

I breathe him in and he’s the desert and the heat and a bit of that crushed prickler-flower powder I gave him one time as a gift. He said it was a gift for a woman, but now he uses it more’n
any
women I know.

When we emerge from the dark I lose my breath, even though he’s been the one doing all the work, ’cause the sight is beyond imagination. We’re high up, unimaginably high, looking out over the vastness of fire country, spreading wide and dark and mysterious under a cloud-filled sky.

Still carrying me, Circ sets himself down and holds me on his lap. “I wanted stars,” he grumbles.

“Never mind the stars,” I say.

Circ looks into my eyes and the warmth and familiarity of ’em are too much, too much. I duck my head into his shoulder and my body shakes, tears trailing silent tracks down my cheeks. “Why are they doing this?” I sob. “What’d any of us ever do to deserve this?”

There are no answers, so Circ stays silent, just holds me, his cheek against my hair.

When the tears stop falling and I’m able to pull away to look at him, his eyes are glistening. He considered Dazz and Buff friends, too. Fought beside ’em, travelled to foreign lands with ’em. Never again.

“Everything’s so burnin’ screwed up,” I say. “We’re the only thing that’s right.”

“No,” Circ says.

“No?” I echo, feeling fresh tears well up. We’re not right?

“Not
only
us,” Circ explains and I blink the tears away. “Your sisters. Wilde. Feve. My family. Everyone down there, sitting around that fire. They’re right, too. We’ve got something—a world, a life, a happiness—worth protecting.”

And his words are so perfect and so beautiful that I want to grab ’em and bring ’em to my chest and never let ’em go…but instead they slice through me ’cause…

“You weren’t there,” I say, my words numb. “You didn’t hafta watch ’em die. You don’t know.”

There’s fire running through my belly and suddenly it’s like I wanna be somewhere else, anywhere else, but I know there’s no place I can hide from the past. From the truth.

Circ kisses me so suddenly I don’t have time to take a breath, but then I’m kissing back and breathing when I can, and realizing this is a place I can go, ’cause when we’re doing this I’m far, far away and maybe I don’t ever hafta come back.

His hand’s on my back, in my hair, tugging at my hips: they’re everywhere at the same time, like he’s got more’n two. He’s all I need.

How can one person, whether male or female, or young or old, or friend or family or lover, make you feel so good, send sparks dancing through your very being? It’s a question only a heart can answer.

His lips, painting a picture on mine. And I’m gone, gone, gone, drifting away…

…finding a better place.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Tristan

W
here the hell am I? What the hell am I doing?

I watched those people die today, and I knew I was watching the hand of evil. It cracked my bones, splintered my soul, shattered my heart. I didn’t know any of them, but I didn’t have to, because they were mothers, fathers, children, brothers, sisters, friends. Like Adele and Roc and Tawni and Elsey and no different than the ones I love down below. They were people—slaughtered like animals.

If the Glassy soldiers doing the killing are the hand of evil, then Borg Lecter is the face, the mouth, the one giving the orders. And I’ve pushed Adele right into his gaping maw to be crushed with a single bite.

She could be dead already. But I’d feel it, wouldn’t I? Instead I feel nothing, empty. Is that because of what I saw today, or because she’s gone? No. No, I felt something completely different when my mom disappeared, when my father admitted—bragged even—that he’d killed her. Sadness and rage and loss. I don’t feel any of that. So that means Adele’s still alive, right?

“Yes,” I whisper under my breath. Even if I’m lying to myself, I feel better having said it out loud.

“What’s that?” the tattooed guy, Feve, asks. His wife took one of the babies he was holding, but he’s still got the other one tucked under his arm like a package. When I first met him, all dark and tatted up and ripped like he spends every day, all day lifting stones, working out, I’d never have guessed he was a family man. And yet somehow…it suits him.

“Uh, nothing,” I grunt, my voice coming out raspy, phlegm in my throat.

New Wildetown stands before us, the towering, sheer cliffs of the canyon rising up on either side, framing a long line of tents and shelters, constructed of a combination of wood and thick animal skins. Activity buzzes through the village. Talking, laughing, shouts of mothers and fathers disciplining their children. It’s all so…normal. Like there aren’t people killing each other less than a day’s journey from here. Like there’s no war, no evil. They might not have a towering glass dome, or the technology to raise it, but the people of the Tri-Tribes have created a bubble of their own. Even being a foreigner, a stranger, I already feel safe here.

My gut clenches. Adele should be here.

“There was another Wildetown,” Feve says, leading me between the rows of tents, past a young boy (clothed in just a tiny skin around his torso) chasing an even younger boy (buck naked). Their mother is chasing both of them, a tub of water standing nearby. I guess kids run from bath time here, too.

“What happened to it?” I ask through my mask.

“Nothing,” Feve says, using his non-baby arm to help a struggling old man to his feet. The man nods at Feve and we keep walking. “The Wildes abandoned it when we formed the Tri-Tribes.”

“The all-girl tribe,” I say.

Feve looks at me curiously. “They’ve told you about our history?”

“As much as they could,” I say. “But it’s easier to understand now that I’m seeing it in real life.”

He nods, swings the child into both arms in front of him, rocks it gently. “The first Wildetown wasn’t as well-hidden or well-protected. This place is almost impossible to find, even if you know where to look.”

I remember how my jaw dropped when we squeezed through what looked like an impossibly small opening in the rocks that surely led to nowhere, only to find a canyon so large it could, apparently, fit the peoples of three tribes in it.

“This canyon is much larger than the one the Wildes used to live in. There are almost three thousand of us.”

“Is that enough to win the war?” I ask, ignoring the stares of a group of children who are laughing and pointing at me. Then, just as we pass them, I crouch down with my hands held out like claws and go, “Rawr!” and they run away shrieking.

Feve raises an eyebrow. “Get the children on your side and you’ll do quite well here,” he says, before going back to my question. “Not nearly enough,” he says. “Not with the firepower the Glassies have. Do you know anything about those weapons they have? The fire sticks?”

I almost laugh, but I don’t want to insult him, nor do I mean to. It’s just crazy that these people are living so primitively they don’t even have a basic understanding of guns or electricity or any of the things I always took for granted. Heck, even the moon and star dwellers understood technology, even if it wasn’t always readily available to them. But these people, they’re happy if they have food and water and each other. Is that so wrong? Is that a reason to kill them?

My almost-laugh turns into a clenched jaw. If anyone can get to Lecter, it’s Adele.

I slip a hand under my mask and massage the tension out of my face, answer the question. “We call them guns,” I say. “They shoot small pods of metal—we call them bullets”—I raise my thumb and forefinger to show him the approximate size—“at speeds so fast they’re invisible to the human eye.”

“Are they magic?” Feve asks, and I think he’s joking, but his eyes are dark and serious.

“Uh, no. Just technology. Like the glass dome. Like the trucks—I mean, fire chariots.”

Feve stops. “This girl, Adele…will she be able to help us?”

I want to believe. I have to believe. “Yes,” I say. “She will help you.”

~~~

I’ll be staying with Feve’s family until they can find me something more suitable. I feel awkward at first, as his wife, Hela, prepares a bed for me, but soon I’m holding his kids and they’re grabbing at my mask, playing with it, and I feel right at home.

It’s the safest I’ve felt since arriving on the surface.

After a day that was longer and more traumatic than most, the soft skins and blankets suck me in, and, hoping Adele’s found a place to sleep, too, I drift away to the muted coughs and babies’ cries and whispers of a camp at rest.

~~~

Shouts shatter the night. I claw at the blankets, drowning in them, trying to get to the air. A sliver of light flashes into the tent and I remember where I am. New Wildetown. Guest of the Tri-Tribes and Feve’s family.

Did I dream the shouts?

One of Feve’s babies starts crying, and I catch a glimpse of Hela picking him up, bringing him to her breast to feed. “Shhh,” she whispers.

“What happened?” I say.

“Feve went to find out,” she says, her eyes barely visible in the dark.