“She wasn’t easy to beat,” I interrupt.
He shakes his head again. “Anyway, this was definitely a guy, but not like the Heaters we’ve seen. He was cut like stone, brown-skinned, but covered in dark markings, like some kind of wild man. He was shirtless, but had a mess of skins over his shoulder. And he hit harder than some sissy-eyed Heater girl. He knocked me flat into tomorrow with a left and a right.”
“Two hits?” I say. “Like I said, the sissy-eyed Heater girl knocked me out with one punch.”
“I guess I can just take a hit better than you,” Buff says, laughing. But then he grabs his head like he just got hit by an iceball.
I sigh. “We can argue about it later. What do you think they’re doing here in ice country?”
“How the chill should I know? They’re supposed to be destroyed.”
“Maybe most of them are,” I say. “Maybe they’re coming here looking for help, someone to take them in.”
“Funny way of asking for it,” Buff grumbles.
“Well, we were chasing them.”
Buff’s eyes narrow. “Hey, describe this Heater girl again, will ya? You know, the girl who beat you up.”
I punch him on the shoulder, but then I describe her.
“The short hair thing’s kinda weird, isn’t it?”
I shrug. “I guess so, but it sort of worked for her. She wasn’t bad looking.”
Buff says, “You know, I felt like there were more of them, too.”
“More of who?”
“The Heaters, or Marked, or whoever they are. Although I only saw the guy with the markings, it felt like there were others watching the whole thing.”
“How many?” I ask.
“I dunno. Like I said, it’s just a feeling I had.”
We both stare off into the forest for a few minutes, thinking about everything. Finally, Buff says, “What are we going to do?”
“Find them,” I say.
~~~
It’s dark by the time we get back to the Brown District. We agree to meet in the morning, to start looking for the mysterious invaders who gave us the quickest beating of our lives.
When I push through the door, I can’t help the smile on my face. It quickly fades though when reality sets in. Mother’s in front of the fire, rocking slightly, using her hands to drum out an uneven rhythm on the floor. Wes is off to the side on the floor too, back against the wall, hand against his head, a half-eaten bowl of soup beside him. And, of course, there’s no Jolie. It’s like losing her sucked all the life out of our already lifeless family. We may have only gotten to see her once or twice a day, but that was enough to make things different, to fill in a bit of the emptiness.
I can’t. As hard as I try to think of the Heaters in ice country, I can’t. Images of my broken family flood my mind and my lips stay flatter than the floor.
“Wes,” I say.
He doesn’t move.
“This has to stop,” I say.
No response.
“I know where Jolie is.”
His head snaps up and a pair of red-veined eyes stares at me. His face is moist. He’s been crying. “That’s not funny,” he says.
“She’s in the palace somewhere,” I say.
“Cut it out.”
“I’m being serious. I’ve got a lot to tell you. I should’ve told you sooner.”
Over two fresh bowls of soup, both for me, and to the erratic sound of my mother’s ceaseless drumming, I tell him everything. What the job really was, about the Cure, how we found Nebo dead and frozen, about the “special cargo”, how I felt ill being a part of it. I wrap things up with our trips to fire country and “meeting” the Heaters.
Wes’s eyes widen at parts, narrow at others, but mostly just pay rapt attention to every word I speak in between slurps of soup. When I finish, his eyes finally leave mine, drifting to watch Mother and her incessant drumming.
“You don’t know for sure Jolie’s in there,” he says.
“I know,” I say.
He nods, like he understands. It’s a brother-sister thing. He knows, too.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner? I’ve been dying more and more every day.” The way he says it sounds so weary-like, as if he might die right here, right now, on the spot, if he doesn’t like my answer.
“Like I told you, they’re watching me. Or at least they were when I worked for the king. I expect they’re still watching, on account of what I know, although maybe they’re not being quite as attentive now that the trade agreement seems to be on hold, or over, or whatever. I thought if they knew I told you, they’d kill us both.” It’s the honest to Mountain Heart truth.