One day, when we’re trudging back into ice country after a long morning in the desert, I see something. A flash of movement in the trees. There and then gone. A bird maybe? Or a rabbit? I don’t know why, but it felt bigger than that. Not bear-size, but much bigger than some woodland critter.
I stick a hand out to stop Buff. We’re both wearing just our skivvies, having left our clothes hanging on a tree branch a little further into the woods. He raises an eyebrow questioningly, opens his lips to speak, but I raise a finger to my mouth, quieting him. I point in the direction I saw the movement.
There it is again, something creeping amongst the creepers. But whatever it is, it’s almost blending in with the brown of the tree trunks, the earthy colors of the forest. Barely discernible, unless you happen to be looking right at it.
A twig snaps.
I charge toward the sound, feeling Buff right behind me. If it’s a Heater, I gotta catch him, make him talk to me about what’s going on in fire country. This might be my only chance.
I barge through a tangled thicket, getting scraped and poked by a half-dozen jaggedy branches, barely noticing the flashes of red on my skin.
More twigs are snapping in front of me, as my quarry realizes he’s being chased, and has chosen haste over stealth. I follow the sound, grabbing tree trunks and swinging around them to increase my momentum. I can see him now, definitely a Heater, wearing brown skins that cover his arms and legs, as if he’s expecting it to get cold real soon. He’s fast too, cutting amongst the trees and bushes like a deer.
But he don’t got nothing on me. I grew up in the forest, I know how it moves, how it breathes, where to expect the roots to jump out at you.
I close in.
His head bobs, his short dark hair ducking around trees, picking a path through the forest.
Almost close enough to grab.
I’m about to dive when—
He whirls around, stopping so quickly I almost bash into him. Except…
The him’s a her.
I look the Heater woman over from head to toe in an instant, and I can’t stop my eyes from stopping on her chest, which pushes her coat outward in a feminine curve. “You’ve got…but those are…I thought you were…” I say eloquently.
She looks at me with dark, mesmerizing eyes, her lips turned up in a fierce grin. “Yeah, and I got one of these too.” Before I have a chance to even think about ducking, she decks me in the head with a fist that I swear is made of stone.
My last thought before my vision goes black: she hits harder than me.
Chapter Fourteen
I wake up beaten by a girl. But she was a Heater, so I don’t mind so much. I don’t even mind the headache, which pounds like an angry drummer on my skull.
A leaf rests on my lips, which I blow off.
Wow! I think. Who was that? A Heater, obviously. But ice, was she ever—
“Urrrr,” someone moans nearby.
“Buff?” I say.
“Yah.”
“You breathin’?” I ask, sitting up, holding my head to stop the forest from spinning.
“Nay,” Buff says, lying flat on his back next to a large tree.
“What happened to you?” I ask, wondering if the Heater girl took him down too. I’m kind of hoping she did, because that would be even more impressive. I mean, we’re not the best fighters in the world or anything, but I like to think we’re better than most. Although that might just be my pride talking.
“Not sure,” Buff says, trying to lift his head up, but thinking better of it and resting it back on the ground. He looks funny wearing just his underwear.
“Was it the girl?” I ask.
“Girl?” Buff says. “What girl?” He’s speaking to the tops of the trees.
I drag myself over to him, so I can see his face. There’s dried blood in a line from his split lip to his chin, and one of his eyes is purple and puffy. I wonder how it compares to my face.
“You look like chill,” I say.
“What girl?” Buff repeats.
“The one I was chasing. I thought she was a guy, but then she turned, all short-haired and fierce. That’s when she hit me.”
“You got hit by a girl?” Buff says incredulously.
“Not hit, Buff. Knocked out. She hits harder than you do!”
Buff looks at me with the one eye he’s able to open. Then he starts to laugh. “You got beat up by a girl?”
I shake my head. “She’s probably the one who got you, too. She’s crazy-tough. Unlike any Icer woman, that much I can tell you.”
“She’s not the one who got me,” Buff says, squinting his one eye, like he’s trying to remember something. “I was right on your tail, doing my iciest to keep up with the manic pace you were plowing through the woods, when something dark dropped from over my head, leaping from the trees. This wasn’t no girl, Dazz, no one so easy to beat as that.”