The Shattered Mountain (7 page)

BOOK: The Shattered Mountain
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14

I
T rains again the next day, but Mara orders them up and moving anyway.

“A day’s rest wouldn’t hurt,” Adán says, as she fills her water skin with brown runoff
water.

“We’re exhausted,” Reynaldo agrees. “And the little ones had a big fright with those
snakes.”

Mara shakes her head. “We have to find help soon,” she says. “If we don’t travel,
Julio and Hando will die. Maybe all of us.”

Adán and Reynaldo exchange a look, but they say nothing more.

Within an hour, they are covered in mud and chilled to the bone. Rosa complains again
that her feet hurt. Quintoro is hungry. Tiny Marlín, toddling barefoot beside her,
begins to cry softly.

Mara looks down and frowns. “Marlín? What’s the matter?” Of all of them, she is the
one who has complained the least. But somewhere along the way, she lost her shoes.
Or maybe she never had any. Not every child in the village had good shoes.

The little girl sniffs. “Muffin was
not
bad.”

“Muffin . . . Oh. Your goat?”

Marlín nods. “Mamá said she was a bad goat. Because she ate our carrots. But she wasn’t
bad. Just hungry. Like me. She had to be outside in the mud a lot. Do you think her
feet hurt all the time? If I have another goat, I will make shoes for her.”

Mara sighs. “Would you like me to carry you for a while?”

Marlín reaches chubby arms up, and Mara hoists her onto her hip. They’ve gone several
steps when Marlín says quietly, “She screamed.”

“Who?”

“Muffin. When the fire came.”

“Oh.” Mara snugs her a bit closer. “I know you miss Muffin, but I need you to be brave
for just a little while longer, all right?”

“All right.”

Such an ordinarily simple task lies before them—get from one place to another. But
they are in bad shape. She catalogs their injuries: Julio’s arrow wound, Hando’s bite,
the gash on Teena’s head, Alessa’s badly blistered feet, and now this tiny girl who
has been walking barefoot through mud and mesquite for who knows how long. How will
she keep them all going?

Mercifully, the slope levels off a bit as they near the desert floor, and Mara lets
her eyes rove the jagged desolation below them. It’s a warren of buttes and gullies
that glow coppery red in the sun, almost as far as the eye can see. Beyond it lies
the deeper desert, a sea of sand, but at this distance it is only a yellowish haze
on the horizon.

The place is as barren as it is beautiful, yet the nomads of Joya d’Arena make their
home here. And she will, too, if they’re to have any chance of surviving this war.

“I should lead from here,” Reynaldo says.

“It’s a maze down there,” Mara says. “No wonder the rebels chose this for their hideout.”

“Someone should hang back and make sure we’re not followed,” he adds. “The perimeter
watch won’t let us pass if there is any chance we’ve led the Inviernos to their camp.”

The back of her neck prickles. She had not considered that their enemy might follow
them unseen. “Any volunteers?” she asks.

“I’ll do it,” says Adán.

“No!” She needs him nearby and safe, for Julio’s sake. “I . . . er . . . I may need
help carrying the little ones, and you’re the strongest.”

“I can do it,” says another boy. He is the next oldest after Adán, a quiet one who
prefers whittling with his knife to conversation.

She searches her memory for his name and snags it. “Thank you, Benito. Don’t hang
back too far—it will be easy to get lost once we’re down there.”

His lips turn up in a cocky half smile. “I’ll be fine,” he says, and then he disappears
into the brush.

Reynaldo leads them west, away from the Shattermount’s flooded fault line. The sky
is still drizzly and gray, their journey slippery with mud. Marlín grows heavy in
her arms.

Late in the afternoon, the sun breaks through the clouds, sending streamers of gold
onto the earth and causing a bright rainbow that stretches the length of two days’
journey. They exchange relieved smiles and pick up the pace. They will rue the relentless
desert sun soon enough, but for now they glory in the way it steams away the soaked
terrain.

Reynaldo calls a halt. At Mara’s questioning look, he says, “Did you hear something?”

Mara orders everyone to silence. Quietly, she lowers Marlín to the ground, then stretches
her aching arms as she listens for anything unusual.

“Mara!” comes the voice, faintly. “Help!”

“Is that Benito?” Adán asks, but Mara is already sprinting back the way they came,
swinging her bow from her shoulder.

She hears the sounds of struggle before she finds them—crunching gravel, a grunt,
a sharp yell of pain. She nearly trips on them as they roll around in a tangle of
hair and limbs. Yellow hair snarled with black, pale skin against dark. The Invierno’s
anklet bones rattle as they wrestle in the mud.

There’s no way she’ll get a clean shot. Her hand flies to the knife at her belt, but
their grappling bodies move so fast, and she doesn’t trust herself not to stab Benito
by mistake.

The Invierno’s yellow braid whips around, and she sees her chance. She lunges into
the fray, grabs the end of the braid, yanks it hard. He yelps, his head snapping back.
Benito takes advantage and sends a fist into his stomach, then another. He rolls the
Invierno onto his back and starts to pound at his face. Something crunches.

“Benito, that’s enough.” Mara’s belly squirms with wrongness.

But the boy is blind with fear and rage, and he sends his fist crashing into the enemy’s
jaw, his ear, his eye.

“Benito!” she yells.

A shape blurs past her. It’s Adán. With a roar, he plunges his skinning knife into
the Invierno’s chest. Mara senses the other children coming up behind her, even as
Adán wrenches his blade from the Invierno’s bloody chest and raises it to strike again.

“No!” Mara darts forward, grabs Adán’s arm. “Stop!”

Adán lashes out blindly with his other hand. His knuckles crack against her cheek,
and she tumbles backward, landing hard on her rear.

Red spots dance in her vision as her eye socket blossoms with pain.

“Oh, God. Mara, I’m so sorry. I . . . oh, God.” Adán throws his knife away from himself
and stares at his hands as though they belong to a stranger. Spatters of blood cover
his shirt.

Mara gets shakily to her feet. “Adán and Benito,” she says, her voice like thunder.
“You are responsible for this, therefore you will dispose of this body.”

“He surprised me!” Benito says. “We stumbled onto each other, and all of a sudden,
he was on top of me, and I—”

She holds up a silencing hand. “If more scouts discover him, they will know we passed
this way. So you will bury him thoroughly and clean up any blood. The rest of us will
set up camp and wait for you.”

Soft crying trickles up to her ears, and Mara looks down to see Marlín at her elbow,
the girl’s horrified gaze fixed on the bloody corpse of the Invierno. Mara bends over
and picks her up. “I need you to be brave for me, Marlín,” she says.

Marlín sniffs. “You say that a lot.”

“Only because it’s the truest thing I know right now.”

“No fire tonight,” Reynaldo says. “There could be more scouts nearby.”

“Did he track us, do you think?” Mara asks. They haven’t even bothered to disguise
their trail.

“I doubt it,” Reynaldo says. “But after we break camp tomorrow, we should get rid
of any footprints, cover the site with brush. Try to make it look like we were never
here.”

“Good thinking.” To Benito and Adán, she says, “No shallow grave. We don’t want coyotes
digging him up.”

“You’re punishing us,” Benito says. “Even though he is the enemy!”

Mara stares him down. “You and Adán were not wrong to kill. This is war, after all.
But you were wrong to lose control. Join us in camp only when you’re certain you have
it back again.”

Mara has survived this long only by remaining in control. If she is going to keep
these children alive, they will have to learn it too.

15

T
HEY haven’t eaten in two days. They have all thinned noticeably, no one more so than
Julio. His cheeks are gaunt, and his eyes are dark, sunken shadows in his otherwise
pallid face. At least once per hour, someone complains about hunger.

Mara begins to practice with her bow in the evenings and early mornings. Several of
the others have slings, and she makes them train together. She tells them they all
need to practice so they can hunt as they go. But really, she needs something to distract
them from their aching, empty bellies.

And she knows that if they encounter another Invierno scout, she’ll need more skill
with the bow to protect them. She practices a quick draw and notch, over and over.
Next, she’ll teach herself to hit a moving target.

“Where did you get that bow?” Reynaldo asks her one morning. They have stepped away
from the campsite while the others linger over hot tea. Mara used some of the precious
herbs from her satchel to make it. Anything to fool their stomachs for a little while.

“Pá got it for me as a Deliverance Day gift,” she says, as she sights a withered pinecone
that she placed atop a boulder.

“It must have been expensive,” he says wonderingly. “It’s beautiful wood. Someone
would have had to go high into the Sierra Sangre for that quality of pine.”

She lets her arrow fly. It misses the target by a handspan at least, and she frowns.
“Arrows don’t come cheap either. I think that’s why he got it. He didn’t actually
like the idea of me
using
it. He just wanted to show off his wealth at a time when all the village children
were practicing with their slings.”

Reynaldo studies her thoughtfully. “I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but . . .”

Mara raises an eyebrow at him. “A dead priest, no less.”

His gaze is slightly shifted, as if he can’t quite bring himself to look her in the
eye. It’s the scar on the corner of her eyelid he’s avoiding, the one her father gave
her when she was ten years old. “But he was not a good man, was he?” he says.

“No, he was not.”

Reynaldo winds up with his sling and throws. His loosed pebble arcs toward the pinecone,
but drops too soon and thunks against the boulder instead. “One time my má was sick,”
he says, seeming not to notice how badly he just missed. “Bad sick. And your pá rode
hard all night to get to our farmstead in time to sit the death watch. He tended her
himself. Forced her to sip her tea, changed out wet cloths for her forehead. And come
morning, her fever broke and she was fine.”

Mara clenches her jaw, not sure how to respond. Yes, her father was known for acts
of tremendous kindness. She came to see them as pretense. Little deceptions meant
to cover up the truth of their lives.

But hearing Reynaldo talk about it, she can’t help but wonder if they were genuine
after all. In the same way that the best lies have an element of truth, maybe evil
is made all the more powerful when it is accompanied by the startling presence of
grace. She says, “He was a good man too. In some ways. That’s what made him so terrifying.”

Reynaldo stares openly now, as if seeing her scar for the first time. Mara always
thought it made her look perpetually sad, or at least tired. Until Julio assured her
it gave her a sultry air, like she had just been thoroughly kissed. What does Reynaldo
see?

“Mara!” someone calls out. “Come quick!” The voice is edged with panic.

She sprints back toward the campsite without a moment’s hesitation, Reynaldo at her
heels.

The children are gathered around something. Mara leaps over the fire pit and elbows
them out of the way, demanding, “What is it? What’s wro . . .”

It’s Julio. He has fallen over, and his cheek grinds into the earth as he gasps for
breath. Beside him, a wooden bowl lies overturned in a tiny, muddy puddle of sage
tea.

Mara drops to the ground beside him. “Julio?” She places her fingertips at his neck
and is relieved to find a weak, scattered pulse.

“He started shaking,” Alessa says, tears in her voice. “Then he dropped his bowl and
fell over, but he wouldn’t stop twitching, and then—” Someone shushes her.

Julio’s eyelids flutter open. “Mara,” he whispers. “My Mara.”

“Is it the pain? I’ll make you some more tea. We need to make sure you’re getting
enough to drink. Then I’ll—”

His hand traps hers, brings it against his chest with surprising strength. His skin
is as hot and dry as the desert sun. “No. Just . . . sit with me, please.”

She blinks rapidly. “Don’t you dare give up. Don’t you
dare
.”

He sighs. “Promise me you’ll—”

“Yes. Adán. I know. But you have to promise not to give up.”

Julio tries to speak but can’t. He takes a few breaths. Tries again. “Not him.
You.
Promise me you won’t hate the world.”

She shakes her head. “I . . . Oh, Julio.”

He smiles. “You burn so bright, Mara.”

He’s too weak to say anything else. They sit there for a moment, staring into each
other’s eyes. She doesn’t see the Julio in front of her—only the Julio from the meadow,
carefree and confident, full of exuberant words and all kinds of plans. Her only plan,
her only hope, was
him
.

Then his hand drops away, plops onto the ground where it lies limply. His head rolls
to the side. The light fades from his eyes.

“Julio?” She grabs his limp hand and squeezes. “No, no, no, no.” She kisses his knuckles,
over and over again. Her tears make muddy streaks on his skin. “Julio, you have to
fight. Don’t give up. Please, I need—”

A hand settles on her shoulder. “He’s gone, Mara,” Reynaldo says.

But Julio’s hand is still warm. How can he be dead when his hand is still warm? It’s
like her insides are splitting open.
No, no, no, no.

“Mara?” The voice comes from far away. Another world. Another life.

She stretches out beside Julio, rubs her hands up and down his arm, gazes upon his
beautiful but colorless face.

“Mara!”

“Go,” she says, not taking her eyes off of Julio. “Just go.”

“He wouldn’t want you to be like this.” Adán’s voice this time.

“I don’t care.”

“Didn’t you promise to take care of me?” His voice turns plaintive and high, like
he’s a small boy instead of nearly a man. “You promised. I know you did.”

She looks up. His face is wet with tears, and he is half bent over with a pain of
his own.

Mara did promise. And she meant it, so she ought to make good. But she feels as though
a chunk of her own self has been cruelly excised, leaving only pain. “I don’t know
how . . .” she sobs out. “I can’t . . .” Maybe part of her died with Julio, and the
rest longs to follow.

Arms wraps around her. Then more, and still more, until she is at the hot, heavy center
of a dozen pairs of embracing limbs.


We

ll
carry
you
for a bit,” Reynaldo says. “It’s our turn.”

And they do. Reynaldo and Adán heave Julio’s body across the packhorse and tie him
down. Then they brace Mara—one under each arm—and lift her from the ground.

Tiny Marlín plants herself in their path. She reaches up and pats Mara’s hip.
Pat, pat. Patpatpat.
Her face is a mask of solemnity.

She says, “I need you to be a brave girl for me, Mara.”

Mara doesn’t know how to respond. Marlín steps aside, and Reynaldo and Adán hold Mara
up. She hangs limp between them.

They’re about to step forward, but Mara says, “Wait.”

They wait.

Mara gathers her feet beneath her. She leans over and gives Reynaldo a kiss on the
cheek, then does the same to Adán. “Thank you,” she says, straightening. “But I can
walk on my own.”

BOOK: The Shattered Mountain
7.95Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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