Abe doesn’t seem bothered at all, just strides right up, dumps his cargo on the ground in front of them. “It’s all here,” he says. “Extra cargo, too, this time.”
The rest of us catch up and unload everything we’re carrying, save for our sliders. I straighten up, feeling instant relief in my back and bones, hoping there’s no pick up tonight. Hiking back up the mountain will be hard enough without tugmeat strapped to our backs.
With coppery eyes and more black hair than a Yag, a short, barrel-chested man steps forward, hand extended as if ceremonially accepting the trade items. “Thank ye,” he says, his voice scratchier than a gnarled thicket. “Load up, you tugs!” he bellows.
The Heaters behind him move forward and grab the packs and sling them over their backs, staggering under the weight. These men don’t look like the two muscly border guards I saw before. They’re tanned and lean, yah, but their leanness is over the border to skinny. The rags they wear around their midsections are tattered and dirty, like they’ve been wearing them for weeks, maybe months. Scars crisscross their backs, arms, and chests in a pattern that matches the leather, multi-tasseled whip hanging from the bushy-bearded spokesman’s belt.
To me, they look like prisoners.
Chapter Ten
We transfer goods to the fire country prisoners three more times that winter, always at night, always to different locations. The day trips are pretty stock standard, trading ice country goods for fire country goods, but the night trips always include the strange bags of mystery herbs.
“Do you think those herbs are some kind of drug?” I ask Buff as we walk through the Blue District. We’ve given up on the Red District. If someone took my sister there, she’s well hidden, because we’ve scoped out every last shivhole in that shivvy District.
“Can’t be,” Buff says. We’ve talked about the herbs a dozen times, but always end up chasing ourselves in a circle. “The only drug I’ve ever heard of is ice powder. If there was some herb floating around, we’d know about it.”
“Maybe it’s the king’s secret stash,” I say.
“It’s possible,” Buff says. “You mean, kind of like a leader to leader exchange thing.”
“Yah, with the fire country guy—what’s his name?—uh, Roan.” It’s the only explanation I can come up with. Other than that, the herb is just an herb, and why would it require all the night work, secrecy, and smuggling in by Heater prisoners?
I know I shouldn’t care about the herbs, or the trade with the Heaters, or anything other than getting Jolie back, but my theories are the only thing keeping me sane. Every day that passes without seeing Jolie is like a bruise on my soul, an ache in places that are impossible to reach and that don’t heal, not with time, not with talk, not with sleep.
The lawkeeper stopped the search weeks ago, chalking it up to a mysterious disappearance, despite the fact that Clint, Looza and I all saw someone take her. But I won’t stop searching, not now, not ever.
Now with winter waning and the throes of a frosty spring upon us, I know that if I don’t figure out what happened to Jolie soon, it might be too late. It might already be too late. Shut up! I tell myself. If I think like that, I might as well curl up in a thick patch of snow and let the Cold take me.
Speaking of the Cold, incidents of the disease have been on the rise as of late. Some say it’s because the winter was one of the coldest yet, and others believe the Heart of the Mountain is angry with us for all of the evils that take place in the Red District. Me, I don’t care either way. If the Cold will come, it’ll come. Who am I to question the why or the how?
I pause in front of an arched doorway. The Blue District isn’t nearly as well off as the White District, but it beats the chill out of the Brown. The streets are clean and free of beggars, the houses are solid and well-maintained, and the people are smart enough to slam their doors in our faces as soon as they realize we’re not from around these parts. I’m not saying I like it, but there are plenny of bad folk who might try to take advantage of them, so they’re right to be cautious.
Another door to knock, this one painted bright green under its white archway. Recently touched up by the look of it. Smooth and bright. I rap on the door with my knuckles as Buff rubs his gloved hands together beside me, trying to generate some heat.
Someone hollers from behind the door, but I can’t make it out. Unusual for this District. Usually the people are quiet and timid. The boisterousness of the cry reminds me of a good old Brown District welcome.
The door opens.
Nebo stands before us, bald and short and altogether the most unintimidating person you could ever meet. His mouth forms an O and he sucks in a gasping “Uhhh!” and then tries to slam the door.
I swing my foot out and wedge it between the door and the jamb. The heavy wood crunches my toes, but I’m already moving forward, lowering my shoulder, barging my way inside. Nebo’s thrown backwards and into the house as the door rebounds off the wall with a solid thud.
He tries to scramble away from us on his arse, but runs right into a table leg, his eyes full of terror.
“Whoa there, Neebs. We’re not going to hurt you,” I say, feeling somewhat bad about the jittery man’s response to our forced arrival.
“Like—like—chill you’re not,” he says. What is this man so afraid of?
“Nay, really, Neebs. We didn’t even know you lived here. We were knocking on every door on this street,” Buff says.
Neebs is shaking his head, his eyes closed. “Go—go away.”
“We just want to ask you a few questions,” I say. Although I’m pretty sure the nervous little man can’t help us with Jolie, clearly he’s scared of something and I want to know what. Plus, he’s been working for Abe/King Goff much longer than us, so he might know more about the mystery herb.
“Nay, nay, nay, nay, nay,” Neebs drones on.
“It’ll only take a minute,” Buff adds.
“Nay, nay, nay, nay, nay.”
Ten “nays” and we haven’t even asked a question yet. Nebo’s as still as a statue, still on the floor, back against the table leg. He looks sort of like a child throwing a tantrum, his eyes all squinted shut, his mouth crunched in an overdone scowl.
I kneel in front of him and he twitches, like he can sense how close I am. “First question,” I say, as soothingly as I can. To my ears my voice sounds like grated rocks.
“No questions,” Neebs says.
I ignore him, say, “Why don’t you want to work for the king anymore?”
“Rule one: no questions,” Neebs says.
“We’re not on the job,” I say, “and you’re not Abe, so I’ll ask you any freezin’ thing I want to.” It comes out a little harsher than I’d planned, but I’m getting frustrated. I repeat the question.
“Bad man,” Neebs says.
“Abe’s a bad man?” Buff asks, sliding in beside me.
“Nay, nay, nay, nay, nay,” Neebo hisses. His eyes are still closed and his mannerisms are so jerky I wonder if he’s got more wrong with him than just silver problems. “The king.” He clamps a hand over his mouth as if he just swore at his mother.
“The king is bad?”
“Not saying any more,” he says, pouting out a lip like a child.
“What are those herbs?” I ask.
He shakes his head.
“Drugs?”
He shakes his head but I don’t think it’s an answer.
“Tea leaves?”
Another shake of the head.
“Spices?”
His eyes flash open and I’m surprised to find them clear and blue. “Not spices,” he says.
It’s like my mind is trying to climb a sheer rock face, and its fingers are scrabbling for something to grab on to, but they keep coming up empty, keep sliding down it, getting torn by the stone, slipping farther and farther toward a fall that will eventually kill it. Nothing makes any sense. That’s usually when everything makes sense. It hits me.
“Is it some kind
of medicine, like the concoctions the healers use?”
The look on his face tells me I’ve hit on something that’s close to the truth. “Abe made me promise not to talk about all that,” he says.
“All what?” Buff says with a growl, but I warn him off with my eyes. I don’t want to scare him back into his shell.
“Nope,” Neebo says, crossing his arms.
“What kind of medicine?” I ask. I soften my voice. “Please—it’s important.”
He bites his lip, as if he has to keep it from telling me everything.
“Please,” I say again.
“Uh-uh.”
“What’s the special cargo we’ll be picking up soon?” I ask.
His eyes close and he goes back to shaking his head.
“Do you know what happened to my sister?” I ask.
He stops shaking, but doesn’t open his eyes, doesn’t give an answer. Just sits there.
We leave, knowing more than we did when we arrived, and yet knowing nothing.
~~~
It’s quiet on the home front. Mother’s passed out on the floor in front of a dwindling fire, a blanket draped over her, clearly placed there by Wes, who’s sitting in a wooden chair just watching the last few flames dissolve into hot embers.
He doesn’t acknowledge my arrival. Not even when I slam the door much harder than is necessary. I hate going home these days.
“I knocked about a hundred doors in the Blue District,” I announce. Wes flinches, as if I’ve pulled him out of a daze, but doesn’t turn or say anything. “No one was really in the talking mood.”
Wes just stares at the fire. He’s beginning to scare me. He’s always been the strong, responsible one—the replacement for my father. Mother could never cope, could never be the one to provide for us, but Wes was stalwart, unflappable. “Get on with what has to be done,” he would always say, mimicking one of my father’s favorite expressions and sounding a chill of a lot like him. But now, ever since Jolie…
Well, he’s still out of work. And it’s not like he’s just been sitting at home staring at the fire. He’s tried to find a job, but things are tight right now, and nothing’s available. Nothing respectable anyway. Luckily I’m making enough to support us—barely. I think that’s what hurts him the most, feeling like he’s relying on someone else, like he can’t stand on his own two feet.
I hate seeing him like this.
“You should get some sleep,” I say. Wes nods. “Are you gonna be okay?” He nods again. “Goodnight.”
My mother shifts in her sleep, murmurs, “Your hair is all a mess, Joles, let me braid it for you.”
Wes’s shoulders shake as he cries.
I go to bed, crying on the inside.
Chapter Eleven
Today’s the day. The special cargo delivery from fire country. Regardless of whether Nebo would answer our questions, we’ll find out soon enough what we’ll be collecting. As usual, it’ll be a night job, so Buff and I have got the whole day to kill.
Neither of us can take another day of knocking doors and getting them slammed in our faces, so we decide to go sliding for fun. It feels like forever since we’ve felt the freedom of the mountain without Abe and his gang surrounding us as part of a job.
We tackle the west slopes, where the pines thin out and leave a relatively unobstructed path of fresh powder. It’s not as cold as it was even yesterday, a clear sign that spring is here to stay. The snow might melt off in a few months, if it does at all, but today it’s as thick as Looza’s stew—perfect for sliding.
We trudge to the top of a steep hill, panting heavily by the time we reach the crest. Sitting next to each other, we grin like a couple of well-fed dogs as we strap our sliders to our feet. For a moment I feel like a child again, back when things were simpler, and my only responsibilities were having fun and getting in trouble. Although I still seem to have the trouble part down pat.
“Ready?” I say, as we push to our feet.
“Chill yah,” Buff says, still grinning.
“Go!” I yell, and we slip over the edge, letting gravity do all the work, practically sucking us down the mountainside.
“Woohooo!” we cry, giddy as schoolboys.
The cold wind whips against my face, bright and fresh and alive, and I’m glad I didn’t wear a slider’s mask. A small patch of pines runs toward us, like they’ve got feet and they’re the ones moving, not us. I cut hard to the right, carving a curving line in the snow, while Buff goes left.
We whip around the trees and then come together on the other side. I lean forward to gain speed, edging in front of Buff, and then angle across his path, switching sides. The game is on, cat and mouse we used to call it, and Buff passes me, swapping sides. Again and again we trade places, ripping a continuous zigzag down the slope.
The hill begins to flatten out, to a perfect landing area for this particular run, but I’m not ready to stop, not ready for the distraction from real life to end, so I lead Buff across a swatch of ice that gives us enough momentum to get to another slope, one that slices through the forest. It’s not intended for sliding, but I feel invincible, like I could slide right through a tree or boulder or anything else that tries to get in my way.
With a whoop, I lift the tip of my slide up and over the edge of the next hill. I’m forced to half-skid/half-turn hard to the right when a sharp gray boulder rises up directly in our path. Powdery snow sprays all around me as I hit a soft patch, cutting back to the left to avoid the edge of the trees on the right hand side.
The challenging natural course doesn’t get any easier from there. A couple of times I think I’m freezed when the slope narrows and trees and rocks close in on all sides and sometimes right in front of me, but I always barely manage to squeeze through even the tiniest gaps. I can still hear the scrape and whoomp of Buff’s slider behind me, so I know he’s managed to follow in my wake so far.
Invincible. That’s what we are. Indestructible.
Such are my thoughts as I cross a trail that leads away to the east, back toward the village. That’s when something grabs me from beneath the snow.
~~~
One second I’m invincible, a slider warrior, and the next I’m airborne, like some icin’ snowbird, except with a broken wing, unable to fly, flipping and spinning and going so fast that there’s only one thing to do.
Crash!
My right shoulder hits first and it feels like I’ve landed on sheer stone, except for the fact that it’s white and my bones crunch through it—and I know for a fact that my shoulder isn’t hard enough to break through rock. So it must be snow. Well, more like a mixture of snow and ice, hard packed and without much give to it.
Then I tumble end over end, arse over heels, shoulders to tailbone to knees to bones and parts I don’t even know the names of. It hurts like I’m getting a beat down from Abe all over again.
Eventually though, the friction of my coat and slider against the snow pinches in enough to bring me to a stop, leaving my head spinning and my heart pounding. I stare at the gray-covered sky, which seems to be moving a chilluva lot more than usual. Or maybe it’s me that’s moving. Or something else entirely.
Buff skids to a graceful stop beside me. “Whoa, man, you all right?” he says.
I go to nod, but my neck feels stiffer than a wood plank. “Urrr,” I say, which obviously means yah.
“What happened?” he asks
Even if I knew, I wouldn’t be able to tell him. “Hurts,” I manage. And then, “Urrr.”
“Anything broken?”
More like everything broken. But I’m just being a baby. The wind’s knocked outta me and I got a few bruises—nothing major. I’ve had worse. “Need…a second,” I say, whistling in breaths between puckered lips.
“What the chill?” Buff says, but this time he’s not speaking to me. He’s looking back up the hill, back toward where I fell, where something—I swear to the Mountain Heart I’m not making this up—grabbed me. It was like it reached up fr
om beneath the snow and clamped down on the front of my slider.
“Urrr, what?” I say, trying to twist my sore neck to see where he’s looking.
“I think…” Buff trails off. I think what? I want to ask but it seems I’ve spent all my words. He unclasps his slider and starts walking away, back up the hill. I groan, meaning “wait”.
But he’s already off. Whatever’s up there, I want to see it too, want to know what caused my fall. Burning holes in the clouds with my eyes, I lean forward and rip off my slider, feeling sharp pain hitting me everywhere, in places I didn’t even know I had. I laugh because it hurts so badly and I wonder if I’m becoming like Abe, laughing at pain.
“Holy shiverbones,” I hear Buff say as I crawl on hands and knees to where he’s standing, looking at something stumpy and dark, like a section of tree trunk, blotched against the snow. I could swear it wasn’t there a minute ago.
“What is it?” I rasp as I approach him one hand and knee at a time.
“Not what,” he says, not making any sense.
The thing comes into view and I gasp.
“Who,” Buff says.
It’s Nebo. Frozen harder than a snowman and deader than a fallen tree.
~~~
“Nebo’s dead,” I say to Abe that night.
“What?” he says, brows curled. He looks surprised. There’s something else in his expression too, but I can’t place it, or maybe he’s just hiding it too well.
“We found him in the woods. Looked like he was bludgeoned to death, his head all mashed up.”
Buff’s staring at his hands. We didn’t know what to do, so we pulled him into the woods, dug a hole in the snow, and stuck him in it. Neither of us really liked the idea, but if we’d brought him in, the lawkeepers would’ve had questions—questions we might not be able to answer. Like why we were in the Blue District knocking on Nebo’s door not a day earlier, just before he showed up dead.