The Sun Dwellers (43 page)

The images fade and Circ stares at me. “What?” he says.

“Uh, nothing,” I say, shaking my head and wondering when Circ became so smoky. It’s like with every passing year he became more and more capable, while I stayed just as useless as ever. He’s good at everything, from hunting to feetball to Learning. And all I’m good at is daydreaming and getting in trouble. He’s smoky, and as my nickname suggests, I’m scrawny.

“You were daydreaming again, weren’t you?” His words are accusing but his tone and expression is as light as the brambleweeds that tumble and bounce across the desert.

“You caught me,” I mumble through my hand.

I see his grin creep around the edges of his fingers. He stands up and offers a hand. “Care to shovel some blaze with me, my lady?”

Despite my self-pitying thoughts, he manages to cheer me up, and I take his hand, laughing. He pulls me up, hands me a shovel. While I carry my shovel, Circ wheels a pushbarrow, and we follow our noses toward the stench, which becomes more and more unbearable with each step. You’ve done this before, I remind myself. You just have to get used to the smell again.

If the smell is bad, the heat is unbearable. Although the heart of the summer is four months distant, you couldn’t tell it by the weather. The air is as thick as ‘zard soup, full of so much moisture that your skin bleeds sweat the moment you step from the shade, as if you’ve just taken a dip in the watering hole. All around us is flat, sandy desert, which radiates the heat like the embers of a dying cook fire. With summer nipping at our heels and winter approaching, almost everything is dead, the long strands of desert wildgrass having been burned away months earlier. A few lonely pricklers continue to thwart death, turned brown in the sun, but rising stalwart from the desert; we call them the plant of the gods for a reason, bearing milk even in the harshest conditions. Without them, my people might not survive the winter.

We reach the edge of the blaze pit and look down. It’s a real mess, as if no one’s been here to shovel it for weeks, maybe even months. It’s going to be a long afternoon.

“Maybe we can just cover it with durt,” I say hopefully.

Circ gives me a look. “Don’t be such a shanker—you know it’s not full yet.”

“I’m not a shanker!” I protest.

“Well, you sure sound like one,” Circ says, grinning. Now I know he’s just trying to get me all riled up.

Determined to prove him wrong, I roll up my dress and tie it off at the side, and then clamber down the side of the pit, feeling the blaze squish under the tread of my bare feet. Gross. Some even slips between my toes. The smell is all around me now, a brownish haze rising up as the collective crap of our entire village cooks under the watchful eye of the hot afternoon sun. Not a pleasant sight.

Gritting my teeth, I start shoveling. The goal is to even it out, move the blaze that’s around the edges to the center. You see, people come and dump their family’s blaze into this pit, but they’re sure as scorch not gonna to wade down into the muck and unload it in a good spot; no, they’re gonna just run up to the pit as fast as they can, dump their dung around the edges and then take off lickety-split. That causes a problem: the blaze keeps on piling up around the edge, usually the edge of the pit closest to the border tents, until the pit is overflowing despite not being even close to full. Then a lucky shanker like me—not that I’m the least bit shanky—gets punished, and has to use a shovel and old-fashioned sweat and grit to move the blaze around. Or if the pit is full, you get to cover it with durt so people can start using the next one. That’s what I was hoping for earlier.

Anyway, I get right into it, heaping the scoop of my shovel full of stinky muck and tossing it as far toward the center as I can get it. Some of it splatters my clothes, but that’s inevitable, so I don’t give it another thought. Clothes can be cleaned, but the job’s not gonna get done without us doing it.

A moment later Circ’s beside me, and within two scoops, his bare chest is glistening with a thin sheen of sweat that reflects the light into my eyes like thousands of sparkling diamonds. Every once in a while, one of us gags, our throats instinctively closing up to prevent any more of the blaze haze from penetrating our lungs. Can a person die of excessive blaze fume inhalation? With three more Shovel Duty afternoons to come, I’m certainly gonna put that question to the test.

Scoop, shovel, gag, repeat.

It goes on like that for an hour, neither of us talking, not because we don’t want to, but because we can’t without choking. At some point I become immune to the smell, but I know it’s still there, like an invisible force lying in wait for its next victim. My supposedly nonexistent muscles are all twisted up, as if a hand is inside my skin, grabbing and squeezing and pounding away. Each shovelful gets smaller and smaller, until there’s almost no point in scooping so I stop, try to jab the shovel in the blaze so it stands upright, but I don’t do it hard enough and it just falls over.

Circ stops, too, and looks at me, a smile playing on his lips. “You look like blaze,” he says, full on laughing now. I
feel
like blaze, too, but I won’t say that.

Instead, I get ready to tell him the same thing, but then I notice: although his legs are spattered and dotted with brown gunk, from the knees up he’s spotless; he’s dripping beads of sweat like the spring rains have come early, but he doesn’t look tired; his tanned arms and chest are machine-like in their perfection. He doesn’t look like blaze at all, so I can’t say it, not without lying, and I won’t lie to Circ.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean—I was just joking around,” Circ says.

My eyes flick to his. How does he know what I’m feeling? Does he know what I see as I look at him, that I see him as perfect? I realize I’m frowning.

“No biggie,” I say, my lips fighting their way against gravity and exhaustion into a pathetic smile. “I was joking, too.”

Circ studies my face for a moment, as if not convinced, but I look away, scan the pit, try to determine our progress. “Ain’t much in it,” I say.

I feel Circ’s stare leave me, like it’s a physical thing touching my cheeks. “We did more than you think. Another hour and we should be nearly there,” Circ says.

Another hour. Ugh. Maybe I am a shanker—another hour might kill me. I think I make a face because Circ says, “Don’t worry, we’ll do it together. Let’s rest for a minute and then we’ll start again.”

Rest: I like the sound of that. There’s nowhere to sit in the pit, unless you want to sit in a big ol’ pile of blaze, so we climb back out, slipping and sliding on the slope. Once I almost fall, but Circ grabs me by the arm and keeps me upright. My head’s down when we near the top and I hear a voice say, “Having fun yet, Scrawny?”

I look up to see three Younglings staring down at me. Hawk’s in the middle.

Stopping, I let Circ pull up alongside me. Caught by surprise, I’m tongue-tied, unable to find the right words to send these punks packin’. Circ, on the other hand, he always seems ready for anything. “Get the scorch out of here, Hawk. We’re working.”

“Mmm, shoveling blaze. And from the looks of it doing a pretty piss-poor job of it.” One of his mates, a guy they call Drag, coughs out a laugh.

“Like you’d know anything about it,” Circ says, taking a step forward.

“You’re right. I don’t know a searin’ thing about blaze, other than it comes out from between my cheeks about a day after I eat a load of tug meat. And then you get to shovel it.” He laughs. “But the only thing I don’t understand, is why you’re here, Circes. Wasn’t the punishment for Scrawny?” There’s a gleam in Hawk’s eyes that makes me shiver, despite the oppressive midafternoon heat.

“I don’t abandon my friends,” Circ says calmly, although I see his fingers curl into fists. “And don’t call her that name.” Another step forward, just one away from the lip. Hawk’s friends take a step back, but Hawk doesn’t move.

“But that’s what she is, right? I mean, look at her. She’s skinny, not an ounce of muscle on her—”

“Watch it.” Circ’s voice is a growl.

“—she’s got legs that are wobblier than a newborn tug’s—”

“Shut it!”

“—and her chest is flatter than the Cotee Plains.”

Circ moves so fast I almost slip again just watching him. I don’t even see the step or two he takes before he’s on top of Hawk, pounding away with both fists. Hawk’s doing his best to block the blows, but he’s making a strange high-pitched noise that tells me plenty of Circ’s punches are getting through. Drag and the other guy, Looper, seem so stunned at first that they just stand there, but then finally get their act together and jump on top of Circ, each grabbing one of his arms from behind, pulling him away from Hawk.

Circ struggles, but they’ve got him so tight he can’t get his arms free. I’m frozen, as if the coldness of ice country has suddenly descended on from the mountains, gluing my feet to the sludge beneath me.

Hawk stands up.

They’re going to hurt him—

Hawk steps forward, wipes a string of blood from his nose, his mouth a snarl.

—all because of me—

The first punch is below the belt and Circ groans, doubles over, unable to protect himself.

—I have to do something.

My feet finally move, come unstuck, as if someone else is controlling them. I’m not Scrawny anymore, not a Runt, not Weak, not any of the other names that I’ve been called my entire life. I’m Siena the brave, and Circ is my friend, and he needs me.

Hawk sees me coming and moves to cut me off, but he’s too slow. My muscles ache from the shoveling, but I block it out, block everything out, except for getting to the guys holding Circ’s arms; if I can just unloose one of them…

I trip. Maybe on the lip of the blaze pit, maybe on a random rock I don’t notice, maybe on my own feet for all I know—it certainly wouldn’t be the first time—but regardless, I start tumbling headfirst, out of control, my arms and legs flailing and flopping like an injured bird as I try to regain my balance.

I don’t.

I crash into the back of Looper, who feels more like a boulder than a Youngling boy, my nose crunching off his iron-like elbow, which fires backwards, knocking me off my feet. I’m in a pile on the dust, covered in blaze and durt and a bit of warm blood that trickles from my nose and onto my lips and from the scrape that I feel on my knee.

“Stupid, Runt,” Hawk says, looming over me, his shadow providing a much needed reprieve from the relentless sun. “You two aren’t even worth the blaze you’ve been shoveling.” He kicks me once in the stomach and I groan, clutch my ribs, which feel like they’re cracked in at least two places.

With my cheek against the dust, I see Circ struggling against the boys, bucking and twisting, but they’re strong, too, and they have the advantage in numbers and energy. Hawk laughs and saunters back over to Circ. “Don’t worry, I won’t hurt your girlfriend anymore. She practically knocked herself out anyway.” Violence spreads across his face once more and he slams his fist into Circ’s stomach twice and then, winding up, whips a wild haymaker that glances off Circ’s jaw with a vicious thud. Drag and Looper throw him to the ground, where he slumps, unmoving.

All I can think is:

My fault.

Chapter Three

W
inter is approaching, and with it, the dust storms. Already I can feel a change in the wind, as if it’s grown arms and legs and a face with a mouth that howls and cries as it approaches. Every few minutes it reaches its boiling point and sweeps a cloud of dust into the air and into my face. I close my eyes, cover my face with my hands, wait for the tiny pricks of sand to cease. Then I soldier on toward the village watering hole.

It’s getting late, the sun having sunk deep on the horizon, where the thickest yellow clouds swirl like a toxic soup, turning the sky darker and darker brown with each passing moment. Soon the sun goddess’s eye will wink shut completely as she passes into sleep.

I’m glad it’s getting late for two reasons: if I run into anyone, it will be harder for them to see my blaze-, durt-, and blood-covered skin; and it’s less likely anyone will still be at the watering hole. Circ went to his family tent to get cleaned up, but I’m too scared to face my father looking like this. I didn’t tell Circ I wasn’t going home right away, and he didn’t ask, which I’m glad about, because he probably would have wanted to come with me, which I really can’t handle right now.

I’m still muddling through everything that happened. Circ apologized about a thousand times on the way back toward the village, until I finally told him to “Shut it!” He has nothing to apologize about—it’s me who messed everything up.

When I reach the watering hole no one’s here.

I sit on the edge and look at the murky brown face in the water. I’m just plain old Scrawny again. I’ve been called it a thousand times, probably more times than Siena, so why shouldn’t it be my name? Add it to the number of times I’ve been called Runt, Stickgirl, and Skeleton, and you’ll have a number greater than the total people in the entire village.

Rippling Scrawny looks back at me, Real Scrawny. Her long, black hair is stringy with sweat and durt. Her thin face is dark brown from the sun but featureless, muddled, with chestnut eyes that almost disappear beside her skin. The dress she wears is frayed and torn, soiled from a day spent shoveling crap and scrabbling in the dust. Her bone-thin arms are like the weakest, topmost branches of the trees she’s seen on the edge of ice country, good for nothing but swaying in the wind. And…