Ice Country (3 page)

She rushes out into my arms and the cold. As
always, she stands on the tops of my snow-capped boots, her socks
getting soaked through. She’s getting so big that my toes get
crushed under her weight, but I can’t bring myself to tell her.
“You’ll catch the Cold,” I say, walking us both inside where I can
feel the tempting heat from a crackling fire.

Face smashed against my chest, she says, “Are
you staying for a while tonight?”

I can hear the memory in her voice, a
desperate longing for another time, when life was simpler and
nights were spent listening to Father’s stories by the fire, or
playing sticks and rocks on the big bearskin rug between our
beds.

But those days are long spent. “I’m sorry,
Joles, there’s something I have to do.”

She steps off my feet and looks up at me all
pouty mouthed. She calls it her sad sled dog face. “Fro-Yo’s,” she
says, accusation in her voice.

“Uhhhh…” I wish? I can’t tell her the
truth—about my fighting and getting banned from the pub. I hate
lying to her, but I can’t let her down, not now when she needs a
big brother to be proud of. “Nay, nothing like that. Actually, I
have a job.” As if. The words just pop into my head, like my heart
wished them into existence. But even just saying the words makes me
feel a little lighter, like even pretending to be respectable in
front of my sister makes me a better person.

Jolie’s eyes widen and her smile returns like
a flint spark. “Really?”

I nod uncertainly, on an angle, like I’m not
sure whether I’m saying yah or nay. She takes it as a yah. “That’s
wonderful, Dazz! Does that mean I can come home soon?” Her hopeful
words are like ice daggers shoved between my ribs and I find myself
breathless.

She senses my hesitation. “Mom?” she
says.

“She’s still pretty bad,” I admit. “But maybe
soon,” I say, unable to resist giving her a small measure of
happiness, even if it’s as false as the so-called job I have to do
tonight.

“What’s the job?” Jolie asks, which is the
natural question that I’m totally unprepared for. I’ve got to come
up with something, and fast, because she’s looking at me with that
cocked-head snowbird expression that usually makes me laugh.

“Master of Chance,” I say, once more going
with the first thing that flashes to mind. Technically I won’t be
the
Master of Chance tonight, but I will be a master of
chance of sorts as I participate in a few rounds of
boulders-’n-avalanches.

“Congratulations,” she says, giving me
another hug. Hopefully her congratulations will still be
appropriate tomorrow, when I’ve quadrupled my tiny pouch of
silver.

“Thanks, Joles,” I say, giving her a final
squeeze. “See you tomorrow?”

“Promise?”

“Yah, Joles, I promise.” This one I’ll
keep.

“Will you at least stay for supper, young
man?” Clint says from across the room. I didn’t even notice the
thin sandy-haired carpenter and his wife, silently preparing dinner
and listening to us.

“Evenin’ sir and ma’am. Sorry, I didn’t see
you there. I’d love to, but I really must be on my way. First day
and all.” More like
last night
. If I’m not lucky, that
is.

“Are you sure, sweetie?” Looza says, chiming
in, her wide waist swinging from side to side as she mixes
something in a big pot. “There’s plenny of soup.” As if to
illustrate, she scoops up a ladleful of hearty stew, letting it
slowly drip back into the mixture. My stomach rumbles as the
delicious aroma of tender bear meat and winter vegetables fills my
nostrils.

“I’ll take it with me, if that’s all right
with you,” I say.

She sighs, but nods and begins filling a
largish pouch.

“Bye, kid,” I say, kissing Jolie lightly on
the forehead.

She steps back up onto my boots and I lean
down so she can kiss my cheek. “Bye, Dazz. I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you, too, Joles,” I say, clenching
my stomach around the empty pit that’s forming. I take the pouch
from Looza and open the door. “Thank—” I start to say, but she
muscles me outside, still holding onto her half of the pouch. She
pulls the door shut on my sister.

I look at her face, which has formed a
question mark out of her eyes, nose and mouth. “Don’t do anything
to hurt that little girl,” she says, her eyes as iron grey as the
clouds were earlier.

“I won’t, ma’am,” I say, unsure of what she’s
getting at.

“Well, then you might want to turn around and
go right back home,” she says, firmly but not unkindly.

“But my job,” I say, knowing how weak it
sounds.

“Yah. Your job,” she says.

Easing the stew pouch from her grip, I say,
“Thank you, ma’am. For the stew and…well, for everything.”

I
take the trail to
the lower Brown District, where Buff lives. The further you go down
the mountain, the less silver people have and the shivvier their
jobs are—if they have work at all. Buff’s father’s a treejacker,
earning a sickle a day from backbreaking work that supplies all the
timber to the White District and the palace. There’s not much new
construction in the Brown District, so little of the wood is sent
our way. By the time Buff’s father gets home he’s so bone-weary
that it’s all he can do to take dinner in bed and go right to
sleep.

Buff’s younger sister, Darce, is a pretty
little thing of all of twelve years old, like Joles. After their
mother died of the Cold three years ago, she took over the motherly
duties of raising all six of Buff’s other little brothers and
sisters, as well as feeding Buff and his father. She’s a woman
trapped in a girl’s body. The exact opposite of what my mother has
become.

I pause on the edge of a large, snow-covered
rock before I make the final descent, breathing in the crisp,
pine-scented air and gazing down the mountainside. The first part
is covered in a winter blanket of white, smooth and unmarked except
for the handful of trails where the snowshoes of treejackers and
miners have trod a deep path in the high crests of powdery snow.
But eventually, beyond the snowy slopes, the mountain turns brown,
dotted with heavy boulders and spindly, leafless trees. Further
down still, heavy oaks rise tall and majestic, all the way to the
edge of ice country, where it seems to collide with fire country.
The desert, they call it, bare and lifeless. Even the sky seems to
recognize the difference, as the moment the forest gives way to
sand and dirt, the clouds stop, as if running up against an
invisible barrier that ends their unceasing march across the night
sky.

For a moment, as I have many times before, I
wonder what’s out there, in fire country, beyond the borders. From
what the men at Fro-Yo’s say, there are the Heaters, a peaceful
tribe of desert-dwellers. Then there are the Glassies, who I like
to call the Pasties, on account of how eerily white their skin is,
even whiter than most of ours. No one really knows where they came
from, but they’re our friends, too, apparently. According to King
Goff’s shouters, who come down from the palace a few times a year
to present us with news from the crown, we have trade agreements
with both the Heaters and the Pasties. We give them wood, bear
meat, and a few other odds and ends, and the Heaters give us what
they call tug and ’zard meat, which have become something of a
delicacy. I don’t know what either a tug or a ’zard is, but the few
times I’ve been lucky enough to eat their meat, I’ve been
impressed—it’s much better than bear or rabbit. The Heaters also
help guard our borders, although I’m not sure who they’re guarding
against. The Pasties, on the other hand, are something of an
enigma. No one seems to know what we get from them in exchange for
the provisions we provide them with.

I’ve never seen a Heater before, but the men
at the pub say they have brown skin and are scared of being cold,
whatever that means. That’s why they never come up the mountain.
The Pasties, however, appear from time to time in the White
District, on their way to the palace. They never stop at any of the
local businesses, nor do they speak to anyone but each other. After
disappearing through the palace gates, they reappear a few hours
later and march right back down the mountain and toward fire
country and their Glass City, which I’ve also never seen, other
than in the paintings you can buy in Chiller’s Market. But as far
as I’m concerned, the drawings are pure fiction—no one could build
a glass structure big enough to enclose an entire town.

In fire country, there’s also the Fire, which
we call the Cold, an airborne plague that kills many each year,
both in fire and ice country. Only, down there, on the flatlands,
it’s much worse, or so they say, killing many of them before their
thirtieth year. I shudder as a burst of ice runs down my spine. If
I lived in fire country, I’d be more than halfway through my life.
At least up here where it snows almost every day of the year, the
Cold is slowed, allowing us to live into our forties. It certainly
puts things into perspective.

It’s forbidden to go to fire country, on
account of the disease.

I turn to look up at the monster-like peaks
rising above me to the north. Sometimes during the day, when a rare
ray of sunlight manages to squeeze through the towers of clouds,
one of the peaks looks like the head of a wolf, with caves for eyes
and a gaping crevice with fang-like rock formations protruding from
its craggy lips. But at night it just looks like a superior being,
sturdy and unchanging, even when the whole world around it seems to
be constantly moving in a million directions.

Under my breath I whisper a silent prayer to
the Heart of the Mountain for luck tonight, and continue down the
trail.

Buff’s family’s place is a dilapidated wooden
structure that’s half the size of our sturdy house. Unlike our
thick, full-trunked walls, their walls are constructed of thin
planks with chunks of mud frozen solid between them. It does well
enough to keep the cold air out, but only when there’s a fire going
in a pit in the center and you’re wearing three layers of clothing.
For Buff, going to Fro-Yo’s means a bit of real warmth he can’t get
at home. I want to help him recover that right more than
anything.

My hands are too cold to pound on another
door, so I just open it.

Inside, there’s chaos.

One of Buff’s little sisters is shoveling
spoons of soup into her mouth so fast that it’s dripping from her
chin, while he tries to get her to eat slower. One of his younger
brothers, who’s practically a clone of Buff, is running around
naked as Darce tries to corral him into a melted-snow bath. Yet
another little-person is painting streaks of brown on the wall with
his hands. Only it’s not paint. It’s mud, which he’s collecting
from a mushy pit on the dirt floor. The unmatched assortment of
beds against one wall are scattered with a few more dozing
children. Buff’s father isn’t there—another late night at the
lumber yards.

When Buff sees me, he shoots me a
thank-the-Heart-of-the-Mountain look, grabs his heaviest coat, and
pushes me out the door, shouting, “Darce, I’m going out—be back
late.” He slams the door behind him. “What took you so freezin’
long,” he snaps, his eyes darting around as if more of his maniac
siblings might be hiding outside somewhere.

Smirking, I lay down my trump card. “Joles,”
I say, not admitting to the five minutes of peace I spent on the
mountainside.

His face softens and his eyes focus on me for
the first time. “Alright, alright, you got me. C’mon.”

We make our way through his neighborhood,
catching a few glances from the lucky few who happen to have
windows in their huts, giving us looks and shaking their heads as
if we’re no more than common hooligans. Don’t they know we have an
almost perfect pub-fighting record? I stare right back at them,
give them a growl, and a few of them shrink back and out of sight.
I laugh.

“Do you have to do that?” Buff says.

“Yah,” I say. “What’s eating you, man? You’re
acting all uptight tonight.”

Buff’s steps are more like stomps beside my
easy footfalls. “I am not uptight!” he snaps, proving my point. He
realizes it, shakes his head, and says, “I don’t know, I’m just
nervous and frustrated about…” His voice fades into the night
breeze.

“About Fro-Yo’s?”

Stomp, stomp, stomp. I stop him, put both
hands on his shoulders. “It’ll be fine, all right? We’ll get the
money, get our pub rights back, maybe even get real jobs
afterwards. Then we’ll start our climb to the top, where it’ll be
full of White District ladies dying to take us home to meet their
parents. But we’ll reject every last one of them.”

Buff snorts. Finally my easygoing best friend
is back. He slaps my arms away. “You can reject them all you want,
but that doesn’t mean I have to.”

“Whatever pulls your sled,” I say.

We trudge along in silence for a few minutes.
“Hey,” I say, remembering Looza’s pouch. “Want to share my
stew?”

Buff flashes me a do-you-really-have-to-ask
look, so I hand him the pouch. He slurps at it, groaning in
delight. “You made this?” he says between his slurp-chews.

“Naw. It’s Looza’s.” I grab it back after he
sucks in another mouthful. “Leave me some, man.” I ease some of the
chunky liquid past my lips, relishing the perfectly balanced
combination of flavors. Looza may not trust me to do the right
thing by my sister, but she sure can whip up a good stew. I finish
it off, wishing I’d asked for two servings, and then tuck the empty
pouch in my pocket to return to her tomorrow.

We fight our way back up the same hill I just
descended, and with each slipping, sliding step I wish we’d agreed
to meet at my place. After a lot of heavy breathing and near falls,
we reach the path to the Red District. It’s not really the kind of
place most people would want to go at night, but we know our way
around better than most.