Even though the kids are clearly scared, they’re like little soldiers, never complaining or crying. They just march on, taking sips of water when we offer them, clinging to the rope that tethers them together like it’s the only thing holding them up.
How can I be doing this? I ask myself at least a dozen times, swishing around a taste so bitter it’s worse than yellow snow. For Jolie, I keep saying in my mind. Getting myself killed now will ensure everything I know is lost, and then she’ll have no chance at all. My only option is to continue to play along, wait for the right moment. Be smart. I feel bad about the kids I’m taking from their families, but I can’t help that either, can only hope that later I’ll be able to help them, along with Jolie.
When we reach the start of the snow-covered slopes, which are shimmering under the pale moonlight, the kids’ eyes light up, and I see the first indication that there’s still some measure of childlike joy in them. They even reach down and pick some up, giggling and dropping it when they feel the cold. Abe gives them a look and I get the feeling that if I wasn’t around, he would scold them and tell them to get a move on.
After a few more hours of trudging through the snow, the kids start to falter, tripping under their own weight, slipping on patches of ice. They’re exhausted. Who knows how far they had to walk across fire country before we met them.
Just before we reach the final stretch to the palace gates, Abe veers off to the right. “Where are you going?” I say, breaking the no-question rule and floating the very last sliver of my luck across the night sky.
“Gotta go the long way. Safer.” Safer for who? Not for the dead-on-their-feet kids. Not for anyone but the king, who’s worried about the general public finding out about his secrets. The Cure. His penchant for stealing children in the dark of the night.
“These kids have to rest soon,” I say.
Abe stops, glances at the kids, as if he’s forgotten they’re here, that they’re people, capable of weariness. Perhaps that’s the only way he can manage his guilt. Then, to my surprise, he shrugs. “I’ll probably catch it from the king, but I’m ready for bed too.”
He heads straight for the palace gate and we follow. Before the gate, he says, “I’ll take it from here.”
“I’ll help you get them to bed,” I say.
“Not a chance,” Abe says. “They won’t let anyone in but me. Take a hike.”
Going home is the last thing I want to do. Thoughts of charging through the gates, fighting off sword- and bow-wielding guards with my bare fists, barging my way into the king’s quarters, knocking him senseless, and taking my sister back cycle through my head.
Then I turn and walk away, Buff by my side.
Over my shoulder, Abe’s voice carries on the wind. “Remember, don’t tell anyone what you saw tonight. Yer bein’ watched. Always.”
Chapter Thirteen
Knowing and not being able to do anything is almost worse than not knowing at all.
Every day Buff and I think up a dozen hare-brained plans to infiltrate the palace and rescue Joles and all the other kids, Heaters and Icers alike, but every day we shoot so many holes in our ideas that they cross the line from impossible to no-way-in-chill-buddy.
At night I literally pull my hair out trying to bully my brain into being smarter. In the morning I find strands of black on my pillow. I want to tell Wes everything, but I’m afraid they’ll know if I do, and then I’ll end up like Nebo. And because Wes’ll know, he’ll have to be taken out too.
It’s a problem without a solution. The only thing I have going for me is the job, which at least allows me to see what’s going on at the border, what the king is up to. But then, one day, the Heaters don’t show up.
“Whaddya make of it?” Brock says, cracking his knuckles and staring off into fire country. It’s a question, but I guess not one that’s against the rules.
Abe scratches his chin. “They were s’posed to have supplies for us today. Something musta happened.”
“Like what?” Buff says.
“Who knows?” Abe says, grabbing a handful of sand and letting it drift through his fingertips. It’s hotter down here than I’ve ever felt before in my life, like sitting in a roaring fire. Even the light breeze is full of heat. Not even a wisp of a yellow cloud mars the great red sky. And the sun? Chill! It feels so close and big I have to shield my eyes with my hand.
I remember everything Roan said the night he failed to deliver the next batch of children. Shiv about being attacked from all sides, by something called Killers, and the pasty-skinned Glassies, and something about the Wildes stealing their girls, or some such rot. When all the time he’s been giving away his children to King Goff anyway, so who is he to complain? Whatever the case, though, something’s gone wrong, which means we have no choice but to trudge back up the mountain empty handed.
At the palace gates, I say, “I want to be the one to deliver the news to Goff.”
“Forget it,” Abe says.
Feeling restless and tired, I say, “Try to stop me,” and march right for the gates, which start to open to let Abe in.
Abe grabs at my arm, but I shrug it off. He makes another grab, so I turn and push him, hard enough to get him to back off, but not as hard as the last time. To my surprise, he raises his hands in peace and lets me go.
“Don’t do anything stupid, kid,” he says.
Surprisingly, Brock and Hightower just watch me go, as if I’m their entertainment for the day. I reach the gates, which stretch higher than ten men on each other’s shoulders, an arched entranceway that’s normally barred by a heavy metal gate that’s cranked open from below. The gate’s more than halfway up now.
Two burly guards block my path, heavy battleaxes in their hands, crisscrossed between them. “I’m here to see the king in place of Abe,” I say, hard-like, as if I really belong there.
“Those are not our orders,” Burly Guard A says.
“Turn around and keep on walking,” says Burly Guard B.
An important decision. To fight or not to fight? Why is it that I constantly have to make this decision over and over again? My standard answer used to be to fight, which I preferred, but now it’s like my brain’s taken over everything, and I don’t know up from down. If I fight a couple of palace guards, maybe I break through, get as far as the next group of guards, but eventually I get stopped. Lose my job if I’m lucky; get dead or chucked in prison if I’m not.
But Jolie’s in there! Argh! I know where my sister is—or at least I’m pretty icin’ sure—and yet I can’t do a freezin’ thing about it.
“I said, move on,” Burly Guard B says. Or is it A? I can’t remember, but all I know is I’ve been standing there for way too long, drawing all kinds of attention from the wall guards, who are peeking over the edge at me, bows steady, arrow nocked and ready to fly.
Not fight.
The decision burns me up inside like I ate something rancy. It’s not a natural decision for me, but I know it’s the right one.
I walk away, expecting the guards to grab me and pull me inside at any second, to do to me what they did to Nebo.
But they don’t, leaving me wondering why I seem to be able to get away with so much more than everyone else.
~~~
Something’s gone down in fire country. Rumors are flying around like snowflakes in a winter’s snowstorm. Or even like a summer snowstorm, like the one we’ve got now.
It’s the warmest part of the year, but you wouldn’t know by looking out your window at the blanket of cold white coating everything, and the blurry, snowflake-filled air.
Buff and I are camped out at my place, riding out the storm, drinking warm ’quiddy and speaking in hushed tones. I don’t know why we’re whispering, because Wes has gone out, still looking for a job, even in a snowstorm, and Mother, well, she’s even more gone, although she’s sitting not two steps away.
“People are saying the Heaters have been destroyed,” Buff says.