I scan the canyons, which are pocked with caves. Girls are moving in and out of the caves, carrying bundles of prickler skins and scrubgrass and weapons. Spears and daggers, bows and pouches of pointers. Enough weapons to outfit every Hunter back in the village.
“Why do you have so many weapons?” I ask, frowning.
“Fire country’s a burnin’ dang’rous place,” Skye says.
I nod. She don’t hafta tell me.
“Are you ready to meet the others?” Lara says, a smile on her lips.
“Meet them?” They don’t look too friendly. Other’n their furtive glances, everyone’s pretty much ignored me since I arrived. Even the girls who found me with my sister didn’t say a word to me, just strode ahead of us, as if I didn’t exist. I get the feeling that things won’t be any different here’n the village. As usual, I’ll be hated for being Scrawny. Always the outsider.
“Searin’ right,” Skye says, flashing a smile as big as Lara’s. What am I missing?
“Uh, sure,” I say.
“Can I do it?” Lara says to Skye.
“All yers,” Skye replies. I look back and forth between them, trying to figure out why they suddenly seem so cheerful. My eyes settle on Lara, who raises two fingers to her mouth and blows out, letting out a whistle, loud and shrill.
Abruptly, all activity in Wildtown ceases. Prickler skins are discarded, weapons are dropped in the durt, budding cook fires are ignored. Every girl runs toward me, cheering and smiling and whooping and hollering.
Naturally, I shrink back, somewhat afraid, somewhat thrilled by the sudden attention. They close in, the mob surrounding me. Cries of “Welcome, Siena!” and “You did it!” ring out ’round me as they pick me up, clap me on the back, pass me around. Something sparks in me and I can’t hold back the laughter. I feel giddy and excited and tearful and wild. Completely wild, like I’m already one of them, a long-haired, Scrawny version of them. Tears of joy stream down my cheeks as I laugh harder’n I’ve laughed in many full moons, years, maybe ever.
For a moment I’m happy. Without a word of question, they’ve accepted me as one of them.
~~~
After the reception they gave me I’m left breathless. Every girl knows my name ’cause apparently Skye’s been talking ’bout me since the moment she arrived. And, although I was introduced to every last one of them, I can’t remember a single name.
“You wanna git the scorch outta here?” Skye finally says. I don’t want to be rude, but with Skye’s invitation comes a chance to get away. Getting attention is much more tiring’n I expected it to be.
I nod, and as she whisks me away I thank as many of the girls as I can, meaning it with every thud of my heart. Lara tags along like my shadow.
Skye takes me to her tent.
Inside, we sit cross-legged in the middle of a wide space, in which a second bed has been added for me to sleep in. Our legs form a triangle, Skye’s and Lara’s and mine. My head’s still buzzing with excitement.
“How’re you feelin’?” Skye asks, reaching out to squeeze my hand.
I search my body for the strongest feeling but there are so many. “I—I don’t know. Happy and sad and surprised and everything.”
Skye smiles. “I know exactly whatcha mean. I’s the same way when I arrived, more surprised’n a newborn baby tug. Not everyone’s been groomed since birth to be a burnin’ Wild, like Lara ’ere.”
Lara blushes. “I wasn’t groomed from birth, maybe from a Totter…”
“You were made for this,” I say to Lara. Without even trying she fits in with these—these warriors. I’m somewhere between six and sixty miles behind.
“You were too!” Lara protests.
I laugh, hold out my tent-pole arms. “Tell that to my body.”
“It’s not about that!” she says. “Tell her, Skye.”
I look to my sister, once more adjusting to the new her. Everything ’bout her is different. Not just the short hair and her physique, as muscly and lithe as a Killer, but her eyes, too, still brown, but with a steel gray behind her gaze. Also her voice, as cut as her body, as if it’s made from stone. It’s filled with slang and language so colorful it’d make Mother cringe all the way up in the land of the gods. “She’s burnin’ right, Sie. It’s what’s in yer heart that matters. Lara tol’ us all ’bout the Killer attack, how you tried to save Circ.”
“And about the Glassies,” Lara adds.
“The baggards,” Skye adds.
I shake my head. “Circ ended up having to save me. And the Glassies? You hadta practically drag me into it, Lara,” I say.
“You were already there, remember?” Lara says.
“Tell me everythin’,” Skye says. “I wanna hear this blaze from you.”
“First tell me ’bout your markings,” I say, glancing at her abdomen.
~~~
Her stomach is as flat as the upper parts of the canyon walls, as flat as my stomach even, but like sheetrock, hard and stacked with muscle.
“Hit me,” she says. I stare at her strangely. “Go ahead.”
“I don’t wanna hit you,” I say.
“Burnin’ hit me!” she repeats, louder this time.
“Just do it,” Lara says. “She won’t stop asking until you do it.”
Tightening my hand into a fist, I aim for the tree marking to the left of her belly button. “Ow!” I grimace when my knuckles connect with her stomach, which might actually be harder’n sheetrock. I pull back my hand, massaging my fingers.
“Father wouldn’t recognize me now, eh?” she says proudly.
“I don’t recognize you,” I say. My fingers return to her stomach, graze her skin. A sun. A flame. A tree. No coincidence. “Our charms,” I say.
“Yeah,” she says. “I hadta git rid of the charms, too many bad memories. But I wanted to keep these ones permanently.” She nods at her markings.
“Why?” I say, my hand jerking protectively to cover my own bracelet. Circ’s charm.
“Burnin’ filthy customs and Laws of the Heaters,” she says. “First rule: ferget everythin’ you learned in that place. Right now.”
I frown, think ’bout it, swing the pointer charm back’n forth with the tip of my finger. “If you don’t believe in the customs, then why mark the charm symbols on your skin at all?”
She looks away, at the side of the tent. “I hadta keep the three most important people close by. Lara,” she says, “can I speak with Sie ’lone for a while?”
Without another word, Lara scoots outta the tent.
~~~
“What do you know?” Skye asks when Lara’s gone.
I stare at her, this imposter that’s trying to be my sister. “’Bout what?” I say.
“Ma. How you got here. Any of it.”
I shrug. “I don’t know much. Mother told me next to nothing till the night of my Call, and then she just said she’d sent you here and she was doing the same for me. And she gave me directions.” I shrug again.
Skye pushes out a breath. “Guess she had more time to talk to me,” she says. “She tol’ me most everythin’.”
“She told you about Brev and the Marked?” I say, and as soon as I see Skye’s expression, I know she didn’t. Least not everything.
“She tol’ me ’bout Brev. But what the scorch does he hafta do with the Marked?” Skye asks.
I tell her what little I know, which is next to nothing. How he couldn’t hang ’round the village with Mother not being allowed to see him. How he left. That he started the Marked.
“Ain’t that interestin’,” Skye says, mulling it over for a bit. In my mind is flashing Feve, Feve, Feve, like some kind of bright star that can’t decide if it wants to shine or not. Should I tell her? Should I tell her that I’ve met a Marked? I can’t. ’Cause then she’ll know I was too weak to make it here on my own.