The Earth Dwellers (9 page)

When I finish, Adele says, “Wow,” and Tristan says, “Is that it?” but I know he’s kidding ’cause I told ’em a scorch of a lot of stuff. Days and days and days’ worth in just a few hours.

“Thank you,” Adele says. “It’s a lot to take in, but it helps. I hope I get to meet the rest of your people some—”

But she doesn’t get to finish that thought, and I don’t get to answer her, ’cause Skye comes rushing in, her eyes hard and her fists harder, and she says, “An Icer just showed up at the Glass City…and they let him in.”

~~~

We’re all peeking over the rocks, blanketed by thick skins that blend right in. It’s hot as scorch ’cause the sun goddess is still a long way from sleep. Sweat’s running down my forehead and into my eyes, but I endure the stinging so I don’t miss anything.

Nothing’s happened since the big doors opened and the Icer went inside the city. We’ve been mumbling the same questions back and forth and up and down and ’round in circles to pass the time.

Why’d an Icer go to see the Glassies?

Is he a Glassy spy, sent to get information for ’em?

Does he know ’bout the Unity Alliance, how Dazz and Buff are getting the Icers to fight with us?

Have they killed him?

Though none of us wanna admit it, it’s the last question that’s the most important.

When the sun goddess gets tired and starts her long journey home, something finally happens. There’s a
whirring
sound, like heavy winds are rushing over us, only there ain’t even the tiniest breeze to cool things down. Then, right ’fore our very eyes, the giant metal door in the side of the Glass City begins to open.

“Another group of soldiers looking for us?” I ask to anyone who might be listening.

“Shhh!” Skye hisses sharply, even louder’n I was.

“I betcha my whole skin of water that Icer ain’t dead,” I say. Is that really what I believe? Or am I just saying it to try to make it true? I think it’s what my mother used to call wishful thinking.

“Sister, I swear on the sun goddess that if you don’t shut yer tug-lovin’ mouth I’ll shut it fer ya!” Again, her saying that was louder’n I was.

So, though I’ve got half-a-dozen other things to say, I stuff ’em down deep, saving ’em for another time. Then I wait.

But I don’t hafta wait long, ’cause outta the door comes a fire chariot—what’d Adele call it? A cluck or truck or some wooloo nonsense—spitting up rocks and pushing a cloud of dust in its wake. And on that…truck…there’re a bunch of soldiers, all dressed in uniforms splotched with browns and greens. And sitting amongst ’em, like he belongs there, like he’s ONE OF ’EM, is that no-good Icer, who I suddenly wish were dead.

~~~

“What the scorch was an
Icer
”—Skye says it like it’s a curse—“doin’ with a bunch of Glassies?”

We’re back inside the hideaway now, setting in a circle. Hawk’s drinking fire juice and keeps trying to pass it ’round until Wilde gives him a look that makes him put it away right quick.

“Maybe he’s pretending to help ’em,” I say, “but really he’s spying on ’em.”

“That’s the searin’ woolooist thing I ever heard in my life,” Skye says.

I frown, chewing on my lip. Why’s she being so tough on me lately? Is it ’cause I gave her a hard time ’bout her thing with Dazz? If so, I’d ’poligize a thousand times—I was just joking ’round to pass the time.

“It’s possible,” Wilde says, and I give her a grateful smile.

“The bigger question,” Tristan says through his mask, leaning forward, his hands on his knees, “is where are they going?”

“Which means starting my mission as soon as possible is even more important now,” Adele says.

Now it’s Tristan’s turn to frown. “That’s not what I meant.”

“You can go with her as far as a rock outcropping near the Glass City,” Wilde says. “Then she’s on her own. May the sun goddess be with her.”

“Oh, she won’t need the sun goddess,” Tristan says. “She’s got everything she needs with her.”

Adele’s only response to that is a wry smile.

Chapter Fifteen

Dazz

A
ll I want to do is run all the way to fire country and tell Skye and Wilde and the rest of my friends what has happened. That I’ve failed them. The Unity Alliance never had the chance to become a reality.

But I can’t, not when the message has already come back from the Glassies in the form of a dozen soldiers, dressed in thick green-and-brown painted uniforms, toting heavy black weapons—fire sticks Skye calls them—and wearing strange masks over their mouths. Yo told me what the message from President Lecter said. He’s accepted our alliance on the condition that we temporarily move to “the New City,” which I assume is what they call the glass-domed city in fire country. We’ll be protected by the Glassy soldiers as we travel there.

But we can’t go there, can we? We can’t abandon the Tri-Tribes, my friends, ice country. There has to be a way to cancel the alliance. A revote, a split decision, something.

Yo says it’s impossible. We all go or none of us go. The message also said if any Icers try to go rogue that they’ll be treated as traitors and killed on sight. For the better part of the morning several of the soldiers have been going house to house, checking to make sure no one’s trying to hide. The rest are keeping a careful watch on the perimeter. Yo says maybe it’s not a bad thing, maybe this is the only way to survive. But I heard the lie in his voice.

What choice do I have? If I try to run, I’ll be abandoning my family, and I might be killed anyway. And if I try to escape with them, they might be killed, too. But if I go along with this plan, at least I can protect Mother and Jolie, Buff and his family, Yo and Abe and Hightower. And the Tri-Tribes might win the war anyway. Then things will just go back to normal, won’t they? I could explain things to Skye and Wilde, make them understand the impossible situation we were in.

The only thing worse than lying to your friends is lying to yourself.

I glare at the Glassy soldier walking by and contemplate whether he’d shoot me if I chucked a snowball at his head.

Make that an iceball.

I head inside to give my family the bad news.

~~~

Jolie doesn’t understand and I don’t blame her. “Why do we have to leave?” she asks.

We’re sitting inside the house, trying to keep warm and considering what to pack for the long journey ahead of us.

“The leaders decided it was best,” I say, trying to keep from grinding my teeth.

“And they’re really smart, right?”

“Wellll,” I say. “Some of them are.” All the ones who voted
against
the decision.

Mother’s gazing absently into the fireplace, saying nothing.

“How long will we be gone?” Jolie asks.

I shrug. “Probably not long. Maybe a week, maybe two. But it could be more than that, too, no one really knows.”

“Will Wilde and Skye be there?”

The question hits me so hard it’s as if the iceball I wanted to launch at the soldier rebounded and came back twice as hard, smashing me in the gut. “Wellll…” Why do I keep starting my sentences with that word, drawing it out like that? As my father would say, “Sounds like a deep thought.” Ha ha. I’m annoying even myself. I start over, ready to face the truth head on with my family by my side. They deserve the truth. “Skye’s not coming, Joles. Nor is Wilde. Not any of our friends from fire country.”

“Why not? Don’t they want to be protected by the Glassies, too?”

Deep breath. Take a sip of hot tea to open my throat. “The thing is, the Glassies are supposedly ‘protecting us’ from the Tri-Tribes.”

Jolie starts cracking up. She doesn’t believe me and I don’t blame her. “Why would we need protecting from our friends?” Sometimes she’s too smart.

I sigh. “We don’t, but the leaders think we do.”

“We should ignore the leaders and go live with Skye,” Jolie says, her face lighting up, like she’s just come up with the best idea in the world. Which she has. The best, impossible idea.

“They won’t let us,” I say. “Trust me, Joles, we have no choice. Now let’s get packed up.”

“This sucks iceballs,” Jolie mutters, and finally Mother snaps her gaze away from the fireplace, her mouth half-open as if to rebuke her daughter’s vulgarity. But then her mouth slowly closes and she gives me the saddest look I’ve ever seen.

~~~

We’re all packed up and ready to go. Mother, Jolie, and I decided to bring just what we can carry on our backs, which isn’t much.

As we walk through the snow, leaving final footprints like markers so we don’t get lost, I glance back at our house, half expecting it to crumble into ash behind us. But it doesn’t, just stands resolute and waiting, the final wisps of smoke from the snuffed out fire snaking from the chimney toward the sky.

A large snowflake lands on my nose, and I watch with crossed eyes as it melts into a tiny droplet that drips to the ground.

I hold Jolie’s hand on one side and Mother’s on the other, and it’s not weird at all like I’d expect it to be. If we must go, we’ll go together, as one. We
are
the Unity Alliance, and we’ll see it through, somehow, someway, if only in our minds and hearts.

We pass the rigid form of a soldier, red-faced and standing at attention, staring past us as if we’re not even there. Are we ghosts? Have we been reduced to wraiths, shadows of ourselves who give in to tyrants? My eyes never leave the soldier’s, as if challenging him, but he doesn’t so much as change the path of his stare; until, just as we’re about past him, his eyes flick to Jolie’s and he winks.

The sudden rage that fills me splits me like a logger’s axe on a fallen tree. I’m taking deep breaths and clenching and unclenching my fists and thinking happy thoughts—doing all the things I’ve practiced to control my temper—when Jolie sticks out her tongue. Well—yeah, get ready for another
deep
thought—let me tell you, the soldier’s face goes even redder, and it’s not from the cold. It’s humiliation and embarrassment and for a second I think he might shoot us all dead right here and now. But his hand only twitches on his weapon and then he flashes a smile and goes right on back to staring at nothing and nobody.

I look down at Jolie, and she’s grinning up at me. Mother’s smiling, too, because sometimes it’s the stuck-out-tongue of a twelve-year-old that’s the best antidote for arrogance and evil; and my temper, too, I guess.

Down the path we go, making our way to Buff’s house. At least we’ll be able to travel with him and his family.

I chuckle softly to myself as we approach. It’s like all the chaos and insanity that’s usually hidden behind the thin wooden walls has spilled out into the snow. They’ve got a wooden-wheeled cart, full of all sorts of odds and ends, like pots and kindling and water skins and—is that a feathered hat?—and bundles of clothes that appear to be dark with wetness and maybe mud, as if they were dropped a dozen times before making it into the cart-bed. All around the cart are munchkins: two of them are rolling over and over, a boy and a girl, grappling, shoving snow in each other’s faces; another one’s climbing the cart wheel, screaming “Ayayayayayaya!” with streaks of mud on her face; a fourth kid, who I like to call Baby-Buff, because of his striking resemblance to my friend, has his boots on the wrong feet and is tossing handfuls of what appears to be flour into the air. “It’s snowing!” he yells at the top of his lungs. The fifth is being wrestled to the cart by the second-oldest, Darcy, who looks to be about at the end of her rope with impatience and frustration, her dark, curly hair tumbling out of a knit-hat and across her face.

Buff’s right behind her, his father’s arm looped around his neck. As they hobble over to the cart, Buff sees us and says, “Want to go kid-wrangling? Whoever gets the most in the cart—you might have to tie them up, mind you—gets a rare and wonderful prize.”

“Ooh, I want a prize,” Jolie says. “What is it?”

“Don’t encourage him,” Darcy says, shoving one of her brothers into the back of the cart. Within seconds, he’s climbed over the food and clothes and leapt off the side, managing to dislodge the wheel-climbing kid at the same time. They tumble through the snow in a fit of giggles and shrieks of delight.

“You get to eat yellow snow!” Buff exclaims, as if
that’s
the most original joke he’s ever made.

“Eww,” Jolie says, but she’s giggling.

I swoop down and grab the two kids wrestling, one under each arm. “I’ll help with the wrangling, but I’ll skip the prize if I win.”

“Your loss,” Buff says with a tight grin. To anyone who doesn’t know him as well as I do, he would almost look happy, like his good old jovial joke-cracking self. But I can see something behind his façade of wisecracks and wide smiles: fear. For his family; for my family; for this entire freezin’ world that’s become a huge Heart-icin’ mess.