Ice Country (6 page)

“Maybe you’ve got stones after all, kid,”
Pierced says with a nod.

I smile, basking in the unexpected bit of
respect from a guy who looked ready to take my head off four hands
ago. And now I’m going to take all his silver.

“But you ain’t got no brains,” he adds, which
wipes the smile right off my face. Huh? What does he know? “Show
’em.”

He doesn’t have to ask me twice. I snap one
boulder over, then the other, slide them toward the draw cards to
make it obvious what I’ve got.

He glares at the cards like he’s going to
grab them and rip them to shreds. But then his expression changes:
his lips turn up, his eyebrows arch, and he laughs. Of all things,
he laughs.

With a short twist of his wrist, he reveals
his cards, the final boulder and a medium stone. I gawk at them,
try to figure out what they mean, think back to how in the chill
those cards could be better than my three boulders. The name of the
very game we’re playing springs to mind.
Boulders-’n-
avalanches
. His two cards, when combined with
the draw cards: two boulders, two medium stones, and one small
stone—an avalanche. The best hand in the game, and a nail in my
coffin.

I stare at him, unable to breathe, unable to
speak, feeling every prick of his continued laughter in my skin,
drawing blood. Final blood.

I drop my head in my hands as he rakes at the
pile with greedy fingers.

Time passes painfully slow. Chairs scrape the
floor. There are voices, pats on the back, but I barely hear them,
barely feel them. Eventually, the voices die down and I’m left in
silence. I feel a presence nearby and finally raise my head.

Buff sits next to me, staring off into space.
“I—I—” I start to say, but my throat’s too dry and it just comes
out as a rasp.

“You had a good hand,” Buff says, turning to
look at me. “You did the right thing.”

His words are no comfort. “I lost everything.
Silver that wasn’t even ours to lose.” What’s my sister going to
think of me now that I’m broker than a lumberjack’s leg trapped
under a fallen tree?

“Not everything,” Buff says, pointing to
what’s left of his pile of silver. Maybe a hundred sickle. He was
the smart one. He played it safe, didn’t take any big risks. “And
you still got me as a friend.”

His words only make the loss hurt more. I
don’t deserve him as a friend. I don’t deserve anyone. All I’m
doing is bringing down pain on everyone I touch. “You should stay
away from me,” I say.

Buff shakes his head. “You can’t get rid of
me that easily,” he says. “We’re gonna get through this together.
We’ll pay back every sickle.”

I feel numb. “How?”

A nasally voice chimes in. “You will pay back
every sickle,” the redhead says. “And you’ll do it our way.”

“What the freeze is that supposed to—” I
start to say.

“My boss has a job for you. Two months of it
and we’ll call things square.”

“What kind of a job?” Buff asks.

“Now you’re working for the king,” she
says.

~~~

“I got a job,” I announce proudly. I don’t
mention that half of my pay will go to the Chance Hole, at least
until I’ve paid off my debts. The funny thing is, I don’t even mind
that part of it. I was two seconds away from being broke and
jobless—now I’m just broke.

“I thought you already had a job,” Jolie
says, cocking her head quizzically. It’s nice having my sister at
home, even if she’s only allowed to stay until Wes and I leave. She
can’t be alone with my mother.

“Ha! Dazz, having a job—you must be thinking
of someone else, Joles,” Wes says with a laugh. My older brother
stirs a mug of steaming tea for mother, who’s curled up on our
bearskin rug.

I give Joles a look, hoping she’ll get the
message to forget about what I said before. “Uh, that didn’t work
out. But this one’s different.”

“Did Yo finally convince you to work behind
the bar?” Wes says. He always tells me I spend so much time at the
pub that I might as well get paid while I’m there. He helps mother
to a sitting position and folds her hands around the mug.

I smile, anticipating the look on his face
when I tell him who I’ll be working for. “Naw, nothing like that,”
I say.

“Tell us,” Jolie says, resting her head on my
shoulder.

“I don’t think Wes is interested, but I’ll
tell you.” Jolie giggles, sticks her ear close to my mouth so I can
tell just her.

“I’m. Working. For. The. King,” I
whisper.

Joles pulls back, an awed expression flashing
across her face. “Are you joking?” she asks. A fair question,
considering how much I joke with her.

I tickle her, drawing a fresh set of giggles.
“Stop, stop,” she cries, but I don’t listen, focusing on her
stomach, which is her most ticklish spot. She’s squirming and
laughing and yelling for me to stop. Finally, I relent and we both
gasp for air.

“Are you really working for the king?” she
asks, grabbing my hand.

I nod.

“What?” Wes says, suddenly interested in what
we’re doing. He finishes wrapping Mother in a blanket and turns to
face me. He has a rare day off from the mines today and it’s weird
to see him without even a smudge of dirt on his face. Without the
dirt, he’s the spitting image of my father, even more so than me.
His dark hair is even cropped short with a slight curl at the top,
just like Father used to wear it. His strong jawline, freshly
shaved cheeks and chin, and tree-bark brown eyes complete the
picture. Me, I’ve got two days’ worth of dark stubble and too-long
hair that puts the
un
in unruly. Feeling self-conscious all
of a sudden next to my well-groomed brother, I run a hand through
my hair like a comb, trying to straighten it.

“I got a job,” I repeat.

“Nay, I got that part. The part about the
king.”

“The job’s working for the king,” I say with
a shrug, as if it’s no big deal.

Wes scoffs. “C’mon, Dazz. Where are you
really working?”

“He’s working for the king,” Joles says, her
hands on her hips, looking more like a mother than a sister. I
laugh and put an arm around her. She’s always given me more credit
than I deserve. But for once, it’s not misplaced.

“But how…?” Wes’s expression alone is worth
all the bad things that happened yesterday. Was it really just
yesterday that I broke up with the witch? So much has happened that
it seems like last year.

“What can I say, the king has an uncanny
ability to recognize talent,” I say, grinning. This is great.

Wes shakes his head, still coming to terms
with the possibility that I’m not lying. He fills his own mug with
boiling water, takes a sip.

“Buff’s working with me too,” I blurt
out.

Wes spews a mouthful of tea across the room,
causing Joles to erupt into a fit of laughter. I can’t help
cracking up, too. Everything about this morning is turning out to
be perfect. While Wes is wiping his mouth and trying to compose
himself, I add, “We start tomorrow, under a two month contract. If
things work out, who knows? It could become permanent.”

Wes uses a cloth to wipe up the mess on the
floor. Then he stands, looks me in the eyes, says, “Well done,
Dazz. I’m really—really proud of you.” I swear there’s melted snow
in his eyes, but then it’s gone. “So what kind of work will you be
doing?”

It’s not something that should be hard to
answer, but Nasal-Talker wasn’t very forthcoming with details
before we left the Hole last night. As we repaid as much of the
loan as we could with Buff’s silver, she told us where to show up
and when, and that was it. She wouldn’t tell us anything else,
except that the job wasn’t difficult, paid well, and was of the
utmost importance to the king. Who were we to argue? Under the
circumstances, the job was a gift.

“Uhhh…stuff,” I say. Well said.

“What sort of stuff?” Wes pushes.

“Tell him, Dazz,” Joles urges, as if she
knows exactly what I’ll be doing. I wish she did so she could tell
me.

“Important stuff,” I add, winking. “Yah, uh,
really important stuff that’s top-secret and I can’t really talk
about it.”

“Like spy stuff?” Jolie asks, excitement
building in her eyes.

“That’s all I can say.”

“Are you for real?” Wes asks, frowning.

“I wish I could say more, but I’d lose my
job.”

Wes gives me a hard look, but then his face
lightens. “Well, whatever you’ll be doing, it’s a big step. You’re
becoming a man.” I ignore the implication of his last comment—that
I’m not already a man—because I’m just happy that he’s not asking
anymore questions.

Wes slaps me on the back, ruffles Jolie’s
hair, gives Mother a kiss on the cheek, and then says, “I’m heading
out to grab a few things. See you later?”

Jolie and I nod. Mother says, “Tell your
father to bring in another load of firewood.” Her hands are still
cupped around her full mug of tea. The tea’s cold.

W
e’re right where
we’re supposed to be. The only problem: there’s no one else
here.

“She did say Skeleton Rock, didn’t she?” Buff
asks.

I gaze up at the large rock formation that
protrudes from the mountainside. As its name suggests, the rocks
are arranged in such a way that it looks like the decomposed
remains of a large beast. The biggest rock is the skull and is
shaped almost like a human’s head. The story goes that there was a
tribe of ogre-like creatures, called Yags, that once roamed the
mountainside, eating everything in sight, from rabbits to bears to
humans. But when the Star Rock crashed into earth, and our
ancestors hid in the Heart of the Mountain, the Yags disappeared,
either killed or having found somewhere else to hide. Some of the
older Icers still believe there are a few of them left, and they
get the blame whenever something unusual happens, like when a kid
gets mysteriously killed, or a dead bear is found in the forest
with no sign of how it died.
The Yags musta done it!
people
say. I think it’s all a load of shiver.

“Definitely Skeleton Rock,” I say, scraping
away a bit of the freshly fallen snow from the rocks with my toe.
“And arsecrack of dawn, right?”

As if remembering how early it is, Buff
yawns, rubs his eyes. “That’s what she said, only without the
arse…or the crack.”

“Maybe we just misheard on account of the
extreme nasalness of her voice.”

Buff laughs, rips the pastry we bought in
town in half, hands me a chunk. Wes gave me two sickles so I could
buy it, as a sort of congratulations on the new job. A day’s pay.
For a second we both chew, relishing the warmth of the fresh
bread.

The black of the clouds begins to lighten to
a dark gray. It’s snowing, but not heavily, which is the same as a
clear sky for this time of year.

I sit down in a snow bank. “Do you think the
king will show up personally?”

“Yah,” Buff says. “And he’ll personally tell
us how proud he is that we were able to lose so badly in
b-’n-a.”

I grunt. “So badly and pathetically that he’d
want to offer us a job.” I pack a snowball, but don’t throw it,
just let it sit at my feet, start on another. “Must be a pretty
shivvy job,” I say, “if he’d pick two of the biggest losers around
to do it.”

“Hey, speak for yourself,” Buff says,
throwing a handful of snow in my face. I return the favor with my
two snowballs, one in the chest, one in the kisser. For a minute we
both wipe the cold off our faces and just laugh. Being frozen
solider than an ice block will make you a little crazy sometimes,
like wild-eyed Jarp down in the Brown District. Sitting on the
corner, he’ll laugh at most everything. A bird flying overhead, a
misshapen cloud, a normal-shapen cloud, a person walking by: he’ll
laugh so hard he has to hold his sides, as if his skin might tear
open and let his insides out.

I start packing another snowball while we
wait for…whatever it is we’re waiting for. We wait and wait,
wondering when Nasal-Talker is going to come by and tell us it was
all a joke and that we better find a real job to pay back our debts
before she gets someone to break our legs.

Right when I’m considering avoiding all that
and heading back to the village, the mountain starts shaking
beneath us, like it’s awakening from a long sleep, ready to buck us
off. It’s a surreal feeling I’ve felt many times before, but it
still leaves me breathless and clutching at the ground. “Are we in
trouble?” Buff shouts above the earthy thunder.

We’re both wondering the same thing, but
slowly coming to the same conclusion. We shake our heads at the
same time. “Nay,” I say, voicing Buff’s thoughts. “The avalanche
must be a good two miles away. The west side of the mountain
maybe?”

Buff nods. “It’s a good guess.”

As the tremors subside, I breathe easier in
our consensus that whatever massive load of boulders and snow and
ice is plummeting down the mountainside won’t come anywhere near
us. We typically get at least one nasty rockslide each winter,
which might take out a handful of houses and maybe kill someone
who’s even unluckier than me, but we haven’t had a “Village Killer”
avalanche since before I was born. Since before my mother was born
even. The last VK was more than fitty years ago and wiped out most
of the Brown District and a good chunk of the Red too. The
middle-class Blue District was hit less severely, and the castle
and the White District were well above the melee, avoiding it
completely. Big shocker. Even nature bows down to the rich.

“Will we get hit this year?” Buff asks. It’s
a question that gets asked dozens of times at Yo’s each year.

I shrug. “You can only control what you can
control,” I say.

“Like how much you gamble and lose?” Buff
says, smirking.

“Shut the chill—” I start to say, but then
stop when I hear a whoop.