Ice Country

  “Are you really working for the king?” she asks, grabbing my hand.

  I nod.

  “What?” Wes says, suddenly interested in what we’re doing. He finishes wrapping Mother in a blanket and turns to face me. He has a rare day off from the mines today and it’s weird to see him without even a smudge of dirt on his face. Without the dirt, he’s the spitting image of my father, even more so than me. His dark hair is even cropped short with a slight curl at the top, just like Father used to wear it. His strong jawline, freshly shaved cheeks and chin, and tree-bark brown eyes complete the picture. Me, I’ve got two days’ worth of dark stubble and too-long hair that puts the un in unruly. Feeling self-conscious all of a sudden next to my well-groomed brother, I run a hand through my hair like a comb, trying to straighten it.

  “I got a job,” I repeat.

  “Nay, I got that part. The part about the king.”

  “The job’s working for the king,” I say with a shrug, as if it’s no big deal.

  Wes scoffs. “C’mon, Dazz. Where are you really working?”

  “He’s working for the king,” Joles says, her hands on her hips, looking more like a mother than a sister. I laugh and put an arm around her. She’s always given me more credit than I deserve. But for once, it’s not misplaced.

  “But how…?” Wes’s expression alone is worth all the bad things that happened yesterday. Was it really just yesterday that I broke up with the witch? So much has happened that it seems like last year.

  “What can I say, the king has an uncanny ability to recognize talent,” I say, grinning. This is great.

  Wes shakes his head, still coming to terms with the possibility that I’m not lying. He fills his own mug with boiling water, takes a sip.

  “Buff’s working with me too,” I blurt out.

  Wes spews a mouthful of tea across the room, causing Joles to erupt into a fit of laughter. I can’t help cracking up, too. Everything about this morning is turning out to be perfect. While Wes is wiping his mouth and trying to compose himself, I add, “We start tomorrow, under a two month contract. If things work out, who knows? It could become permanent.”

  Wes uses a cloth to wipe up the mess on the floor. Then he stands, looks me in the eyes, says, “Well done, Dazz. I’m really—really proud of you.” I swear there’s melted snow in his eyes, but then it’s gone. “So what kind of work will you be doing?”

  It’s not something that should be hard to answer, but Nasal-Talker wasn’t very forthcoming with details before we left the Hole last night. As we repaid as much of the loan as we could with Buff’s silver, she told us where to show up and when, and that was it. She wouldn’t tell us anything else, except that the job wasn’t difficult, paid well, and was of the utmost importance to the king. Who were we to argue? Under the circumstances, the job was a gift.

  “Uhhh…stuff,” I say. Well said.

  “What sort of stuff?” Wes pushes.

  “Tell him, Dazz,” Joles urges, as if she knows exactly what I’ll be doing. I wish she did so she could tell me.

  “Important stuff,” I add, winking. “Yah, uh, really important stuff that’s top-secret and I can’t really talk about it.”

  “Like spy stuff?” Jolie asks, excitement building in her eyes.

  “That’s all I can say.”

  “Are you for real?” Wes asks, frowning.

  “I wish I could say more, but I’d lose my job.”

  Wes gives me a hard look, but then his face lightens. “Well, whatever you’ll be doing, it’s a big step. You’re becoming a man.” I ignore the implication of his last comment—that I’m not already a man—because I’m just happy that he’s not asking anymore questions.

  Wes slaps me on the back, ruffles Jolie’s hair, gives Mother a kiss on the cheek, and then says, “I’m heading out to grab a few things. See you later?”

  Jolie and I nod. Mother says, “Tell your father to bring in another load of firewood.” Her hands are still cupped around her full mug of tea. The tea’s cold.

  Chapter Six

  We’re right where we’re supposed to be. The only problem: there’s no one else here.

  “She did say Skeleton Rock, didn’t she?” Buff asks.

  I gaze up at the large rock formation that protrudes from the mountainside. As its name suggests, the rocks are arranged in such a way that it looks like the decomposed remains of a large beast. The biggest rock is the skull and is shaped almost like a human’s head. The story goes that there was a tribe of ogre-like creatures, called Yags, that once roamed the mountainside, eating everything in sight, from rabbits to bears to humans. But when the Star Rock crashed into earth, and our ancestors hid in the Heart of the Mountain, the Yags disappeared, either killed or having found somewhere else to hide. Some of the older Icers still believe there are a few of them left, and they get the blame whenever something unusual happens, like when a kid gets mysteriously killed, or a dead bear is found in the forest with no sign of how it died. The Yags musta done it! people say. I think it’s all a load of shiver.

  “Definitely Skeleton Rock,” I say, scraping away a bit of the freshly fallen snow from the rocks with my toe. “And arsecrack of dawn, right?”

  As if remembering how early it is, Buff yawns, rubs his eyes. “That’s what she said, only without the arse…or the crack.”

  “Maybe we just misheard on account of the extreme nasalness of her voice.”

  Buff laughs, rips the pastry we bought in town in half, hands me a chunk. Wes gave me two sickles so I could buy it, as a sort of congratulations on the new job. A day’s pay. For a second we both chew, relishing the warmth of the fresh bread.

  The black of the clouds begins to lighten to a dark gray. It’s snowing, but not heavily, which is the same as a clear sky for this time of year.

  I sit down in a snow bank. “Do you think the king will show up personally?”

  “Yah,” Buff says. “And he’ll personally tell us how proud he is that we were able to lose so badly in b-’n-a.”

  I grunt. “So badly and pathetically that he’d want to offer us a job.” I pack a snowball, but don’t throw it, just let it sit at my feet, start on another. “Must be a pretty shivvy job,” I say, “if he’d pick two of the biggest losers around to do it.”

  “Hey, speak for yourself,” Buff says, throwing a handful of snow in my face. I return the favor with my two snowballs, one in the chest, one in the kisser. For a minute we both wipe the cold off our faces and just laugh. Being frozen solider than an ice block will make you a little crazy sometimes, like wild-eyed Jarp down in the Brown District. Sitting on the corner, he’ll laugh at most everything. A bird flying overhead, a misshapen cloud, a normal-shapen cloud, a person walking by: he’ll laugh so hard he has to hold his sides, as if his skin might tear open and let his insides out.

  I start packing another snowball while we wait for…whatever it is we’re waiting for. We wait and wait, wondering when Nasal-Talker is going to come by and tell us it was all a joke and that we better find a real job to pay back our debts before she gets someone to break our legs.

  Right when I’m considering avoiding all that and heading back to the village, the mountain starts shaking beneath us, like it’s awakening from a long sleep, ready to buck us off. It’s a surreal feeling I’ve felt many times before, but it still leaves me breathless and clutching at the ground. “Are we in trouble?” Buff shouts above the earthy thunder.

  We’re both wondering the same thing, but slowly coming to the same conclusion. We shake our heads at the same time. “Nay,” I say, voicing Buff’s thoughts. “The avalanche must be a good two miles away. The west side of the mountain maybe?”

  Buff nods. “It’s a good guess.”

  As the tremors subside, I breathe easier in our consensus that whatever massive load of boulders and snow and ice is plummeting down the mountainside won’t come anywhere near us. We typically get at least one nasty rockslide each winter, which might take out a handful of houses and mayb
e kill someone who’s even unluckier than me, but we haven’t had a “Village Killer” avalanche since before I was born. Since before my mother was born even. The last VK was more than fitty years ago and wiped out most of the Brown District and a good chunk of the Red too. The middle-class Blue District was hit less severely, and the castle and the White District were well above the melee, avoiding it completely. Big shocker. Even nature bows down to the rich.

  “Will we get hit this year?” Buff asks. It’s a question that gets asked dozens of times at Yo’s each year.

  I shrug. “You can only control what you can control,” I say.

  “Like how much you gamble and lose?” Buff says, smirking.

  “Shut the chill—” I start to say, but then stop when I hear a whoop.

  We scramble to our feet, spin around, gaze up the snowy mountainside. Plumes of snow burst from the ground like low-flying clouds. Blurs of black snowsuits flash down the incline, cutting side to side, carving up the slope. A line of sliders, chasing each other playfully, head right toward us.

  “Look out!” Buff shouts, but I’m not sure if he’s talking to me or the sliders bearing down on us. I don’t have time to clarify as I jump to one side, narrowly avoiding getting chopped down like a poorly placed snowman.

  When I look up there’s snow in the scruff of my thin beard and flecks of ice on my eyelashes. “What the chill?” I say, pushing to my feet, warmth flooding through my limbs. I’m not warm, but something inside me wants me to be.

  Three sliders are stopped just past us, having turned their slides at sharp angles to brake suddenly. It’s almost like they were aiming right for us. We can’t see their faces, because they’re wearing thick masks to keep the snow and cold away, but their eyes are alight with adrenaline and blinking away coldness-induced moisture.

  “You Daisy and Barf?” one of them says, his alert eyes flicking between us.

  “What?” I say, taking a step forward. “I oughta beat you senseless for a move like that.”

  The guy laughs. “The king calls the shots here. You touch me and you’ll be off the job quicker than you got on it. And trust me, you don’t want that.”

  “What?” I say. “You mean, you’re the ones meeting us?”

  “Get wit’ it, kid,” another of the guys says. “You must be Daisy, the big gambler who lost enough silver to land you wit’ us.”

  “It’s Dazz,” I say, taking another step forward. “Call me that one more time and you can slide the rest of the way down the mountain with a broken arm.”

  “And I’m Buff,” Buff says, stepping beside me, his fists knotted. He’s all riled up, too, which almost makes me grin. Nothing like a good scrap to start our first day on the job.

  “Calm the freeze down,” the first guy says, shaking his head. “Heart of the Mountain, you’d think we actually hit you guys.”

  “Near enough,” Buff says, not giving an inch.

  “Look, we’re on the same side. Consider it a bit of friendly first day initiation. Now do you want to get to work or swing those antsy fists of yers?”

  The honest answer is that I want to swing my fists, but this new job is supposed to be part of a fresh start, so I flex my hands, trying to coax the fight out of them. But I’m also not about to back off without some form of retribution. Weakness like that can haunt a guy. I pick up one of my snowballs and launch it hard enough to do some serious damage. Crunch! Although it was headed right for the main speaker’s head, the ball slams into the open hand of one of the other guys, the biggest of the lot. Good reflexes. He grunts, squeezes the ball into mush in his fist, lets it crumble to the ground.

  The main guy laughs. “Nice arm,” he says. “That’s why we keep this guy around. We call him Hightower, on account of…well, I think it’s obvious.”

  Obvious as a wolf in a sled dog team, I think, staring at the big, brown eyes of the gargantuan who’s at eye level despite being a good foot further down the hill than me.

  “I’m Abe,” the guy continues. “This fella is Brock.” He motions to the other one who spoke to us. His eyes glare back, sort of cross-eyed. “And this little guy is…” Abe looks around, scanning at waist level, like he’s trying to find a missing child. There’s no one else around. “Where the freeze is Nebo?”

  Brock gazes up the mountain. “’E was right ’ere a minute ago…Musta gotten lost at the hairpin.” Something about his tone tells me he knows exactly what happened to the one they call Nebo.

  Hightower grunts and points, so we all follow his gesture until we spot another slider coming down slowly, barely spraying any snow at all. We track his progress all the way to us, although it takes so long I swear another inch of fresh snow has fallen by the time he gets down. His every movement is uncertain, awkward, unbalanced, and when he tries to stop, his slider gets all tangled up with his feet and he goes down face first.

  The others are laughing—even Buff is sniggering—and normally I’d probably join in, but something about the guy seems so helpless, so pathetic, that I don’t feel like getting pleasure at his expense. After all, I’ve been pretty pathetic lately myself.

  “Shut it,” I say, punching Buff and shooting icicles at the others. I help the guy, who really is quite small, to his feet, using the back of my hand to brush some of the snow off. Right away he pulls at his mask, which is caked with snow, until it pops off his head.

  He’s bald…and short…and jittery.

  It’s the man who came out of the Chance Hole last night.

  “You!” I say, loud enough that the small man takes a step back, concern flashing across his red face.

  “Do I know you?” he asks, saying it in such a way that it sounds like he thinks he probably should.

  “We saw you leaving the Hole last night,” I say.

  He screws up his face. “Last night. Not a good night,” he says.

  “Ah, I wouldn’t say that, Neebs,” Abe says. “Your new losses pretty much guarantee you’ll be working with us for the rest of time.” Abe chuckles, takes a few steps over to smack Nebo on the back. Nebo cringes and puts a hand to his mouth as if the weak blow knocked a few of his teeth loose. “You’re late. Where you been?”

  “Uh, sir, I’m sorry, but uh, Brock here, he, well, he…”

  “Spit it out!” Abe says, glancing at Brock. “What did Brock do?”

  Behind Abe’s back I see Brock use his thumb to make a slashing motion across his throat. “I, uh, well, Brock didn’t do anything actually. I just, well, sort of fell going around a bend, sir. I’m sorry, it won’t happen again,” Nebo finishes lamely, ducking his head like he expects to be hit.

  Clearly there’s more to the story, and if I had to guess, it was probably Brock who caused the fall in the first place.

  I chew on my lip, which is suddenly feeling numb. “So this is his first day, too?” I ask, wondering why he didn’t meet them at the same place as us.

  “Ha ha ha!” Brock laughs boisterously. “First day—that’s funny. Despite Neeb’s awful display of sliding, ’e’s actually been runnin’ with us for comin’ on a year now.”

  “Then why…” I start to ask, but then figure out exactly what happened. Why would Nebo be playing high stakes boulders-’n-avalanches if he’s already got a job and debts to pay? Simple. Because he wanted out. One lucky night and he could pay his way back to whatever normal job he might’ve had before he first lost big at the Chance Hole. But why would he want out of a job working for the king?

  “Why what?” Abe says, staring at me strangely, as if he can see the tail end of the question hanging off the tip of my tongue.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  “Good,” he says, ripping off his mask. His face is pale white with a nose so flat it looks like someone uses it for a punching bag on daily basis. His ears stick out and sort of up, like maybe he can hear as well as an animal, like a rabbit. He’s older than us, but only by a few years. “First, some instruction.”

  Beside me, Buff mumbles, “I thought school was l
ong over.”

  Abe ignores him. “Brock. Wanna start with the rules?”

  Brock nods and pull off his mask, revealing a face that only a mother could love, and even that would be stretch. It’s so bruised and scarred that it looks like he mighta had a pet dog and offered his cheeks as a chew toy. Either that or this guy’s been in a lot of fights, and not just of the fists and brawn variety. A long, six-inch scar runs from the edge of his right eye to his lips, like a curved scythe. It reeks of knife wound.

  Maybe it’s a good thing we didn’t start something with these guys. Between grunting Hightower and Brock, whose eyes are looking crazier by the second, we mighta had our hands full.

  Brock says, “We ain’t got many rules, but if you break one, we’ll break you.” He sniggers, but I don’t think he’s joking. “One. Do as yer told. Abe gets ’is instructions straight from the crown, so take what ’e says as if King Goff’s the one sayin’ it. And don’t ask questions. If we don’t tell you somethin’, it’s cuz we don’t want you to know. Got it?”

  He pauses, as if testing us to see if we’ll ask any questions right after him telling us not to. We both just nod.

  “Number two. Don’t tell anyone about what you do while on the job. You work fer the king, helpin’ wit’ the fire country trade routes. That’s it.”

  “Well done,” Abe says, which draws a grotesque smile from Brock’s pock- and scar-marked face. “Maybe you got more than just rocks fer brains after all.” Brock’s smile fades and he looks like he wants to add a few scars to Abe’s mostly smooth face.

  “It’s forbidden to go to fire country,” I say, taking care to craft my question as a statement.

  “Not for us,” Abe growls.

  “And you’re the ones in charge of all the fire country trade,” I say. Another statement.

  “We’re not the only group,” he says cryptically. “But we’re the most important ones.”

  I look at Buff, who shrugs. “Let’s do this,” he says, cracking his knuckles beneath his thick gloves.