Ice Country(39)

Wes nods, sighs. “You did the right thing.”

I close my eyes. My brother’s back. The one who decides what’s right and wrong, who always knows what to do, whose approval I’ve been desperately seeking even though maybe I didn’t realize it until right now. His words seem to wash over me like cold water, cleansing me. Every decision I’ve made over the last few months has seemed so wrong, mostly because Jolie’s still gone, but hearing Wes say those words seems to validate it all. I shouldn’t need validation, but I do.

“Thanks,” I say.

“What now?” he asks.

“I need your help.”

Light flows into his eyes as he turns toward me, as if someone’s just lit a fire, although the fireplace has been crackling since I entered the room. A purpose. Perhaps he can’t get a job, can’t provide for his family, but he can help me bring Jolie back, and that’s a greater purpose than anything.





~~~





We don’t know where to start looking, so we begin where it started, where Buff and I got our arse’s handed to us by a girl and marked man.

“The trail’s cold,” Wes says, “but it’s still here.” I smile, both because of the words he’s saying and because it’s him that’s saying them. I haven’t heard him speak like that, with such confidence and directness, since Joles was taken.

“How many do you think there are?” I ask.

Wes chews his lip. “Can’t tell just yet, but at least two. Maybe more.”

“Good,” I say. “Let’s see where it takes us.”

Wes leads, because he’s the best tracker, and Buff brings up the rear, because, well, “You’re the biggest arse I’ve ever met,” I say.

He makes a gesture that borders on rude, but slips in behind me, stepping on the back of my boots every few minutes.

We’re warm when we start, on account of our heavy clothing, but soon the trail leads us high enough up the mountain that it’s downright chilly. “The Heaters we always met at the border were dressed for hot weather, wearing only thin skins,” I say. “These ones had skins and looked ready to face the cold.”

“Do you want to be the one to warm her up?” Buff says from behind.

“Shut it,” I say. “Just because I was impressed with how she could throw a punch doesn’t mean I’m looking to hug her.”

Wes stops, looks at us both like we’re slightly crazy, says, “The trail keeps leading up, so they’d be getting good use out of those skins right about now.”

Wes keeps marching on and we follow. He stops every once in a while to inspect a broken tree branch or a shallow footprint.

When we reach the snowfields, there are dozens of prints, all clustered together, and then deep gouges in the snow where it looks like they laid down. “I can see five distinct sets of prints,” Wes says.

“They’d have frozen their stones off lying in the snow like that,” Buff says. Then, grinning, adds, “At least the Marked guy would’ve, but the girl wouldn’t have any stones to freeze off, would she?”

“Oh, she had stones all right,” I say, “just not the kind you’re talking about.”

“Don’t they know snow is cold?” Wes asks.

I shrug. “They’ve probably never seen it. You should’ve seen the look on the Heater children’s faces when we came through these parts. They were in awe of the white stuff.”

“Don’t see what the allure is,” Buff says. “I’ve had enough of it to last me for ten lifetimes.”

I bend down to touch the impressions in the snow, imagining the Heater girl in the snow, knee bent, smiling at the white ground around her. What is she doing so far from home?

“Well, whatever the case, even with their warm clothing they’d be getting pretty cold at this point, searching for shelter. Let’s see where their footsteps lead,” Wes says.

Sure enough, the trail leads off to the side, away from the snowfields and back into the forest, where the snow is thinner and there’s more protection from the frosty wind. Ahh, summer in ice country, I think to myself. Not what the Heaters would be used to.

The prints run right up to a gigantic tree, with a trunk thicker than a Yag’s chest and a huge hole in it, big enough to sleep five people, if everyone crammed together. And, according to Wes, they had to sleep five, so they were really crammed.

Inside are the remnants of a small fire, all ash and charred twigs left over, which is impressive. Fires aren’t easy to make in ice country, especially when you’re not used to doing it.

“They slept here,” Buff says.