“It’s an informal scrimmage.” That defensive voice belonged to a high-profile senior who would ordinarily make her stutter and stammer.

  “You do it, Alex. Do it. Like you did before,” Ethan commanded.

  They’d been camping then. Dad was off hiking. Mom had found instructions on the Internet but only kept connection by standing on the car with the phone held aloft. When they tried to switch, the connection flickered out. Terrified they’d lose it completely, Mom read the instructions and Alex followed them.

  “We gotta take him to the ER,” said the bear.

  “No!” Ethan grimaced. “The longer it’s out, the worse it is.”

  “Take him to the bench,” she ordered. Later she was surprised she took charge. Right then she didn’t consider it. Ethan clenched his teeth on a scream as one player jostled his arm. “Don’t touch his arm! Support the elbow with your other hand, Ethan.”

  The walk to the bench went in a flash. Did she remember how to do it? She did remember him sitting on a log at the campsite—still her little brother then—with tears sliding down from the pain.

  “Sit,” she ordered Ria now. When the girl didn’t, she snapped, “Sit, dammit.”

  The longer you wait the worse it is, Alex. Go ahead. Do it. Do it now. I know you can.

  “Open your top.”

  Ria started to protest. Alex gestured around the cabin. “Who’s going to see? If you don’t open it, I’ll rip it off.”

  That got Ria’s fingers moving.

  Gathering the material of the front-button blouse, Alex eased it over the injured shoulder and down Ria’s arm.

  A knob that shouldn’t be there pushed up at the point of the shoulder. She released a long breath. What if it hadn’t been a dislocation?

  But it was.

  “Let your arm hang down. Relax. As much as you can.”

  Gently, she supported the arm above and below the elbow as she brought the forearm up to a right angle. Ria was not relaxed.

  Alex massaged, sliding up to the tight line from Ria’s neck to her shoulder, avoiding the joint, then down to the biceps and back. Over and over.

  Breathe through the nose. Helps relaxation.

  That wasn’t Ethan’s voice.

  Speedo, it must be. A least weasel who knew first aid. She felt a horrible urge to giggle.

  “Breathe in through your nose and out through your nose.” She didn’t add the part about it helping with relaxation. Ria would probably resist to be difficult.

  In and out. Slow and steady.

  Was that Kel’s voice?

  As she repeated the words to Ria, a glint of light crossed Alex’s mind. One of Kel’s balls. Moving slowly, a controlled flow to where he directed it. Steady and deliberate.

  Alex felt her breathing ease, the rhythm of her massaging smooth, her mind clear.

  She brought Ria’s hand up to her own shoulder, keeping a tight bend in Ria’s elbow and her upper arm close to her body. Alex’s hand on Ria’s forearm added a bit of weight to it, drawing down her arm and shoulder slightly. Traction, they called it in those instructions Mom had shouted to her from the roof of the car.

  She resumed massaging.

  “Nothing has happened,” Ria said.

  “Keep breathing. Relax your shoulder and arm. This would be easier if we’d done it right away. If you weren’t so stubborn.” Ria tensed. Alex backtracked, envisioning the movement of Kel and Ria at practice. “Think about working with the balls. Breathe in through your nose—”

  “I know.”

  “—notice where it’s tense and concentrate on that as you breathe out. Again.”

  Alex felt tension in Ria’s muscles start to loosen.

  Ria breathed in again, held it for a beat, then breathed out. That was even better.

  “When it goes back in,” Alex said, “it might feel strange. Don’t fight it.” Their eyes met. “For once, don’t fight. Just let it happen.”

  Alex looked back down, checking the positioning. She thought this was right. She’d only done this twice and—no. No questioning. She had to do it. Steady and deliberate. She had to.

  She brought Ria’s hand up higher on her shoulder.

  “On your next breath out when it feels relaxed, shrug your shoulders.”

  Ria breathed out once, twice. The third time she shrugged.

  There was no sound, but the knob disappeared.

  “It’s back in.”

  Ria looked up, startled. “It is. It feels better.”

  “You could still have tears and damage in the cartilage—”

  “What?”

  “It will take a while to heal completely. You should use a sling until then.”

  “Sling,” Ria scoffed.

  “Or support your arm with the other hand.” Alex directed her gaze to where Ria was doing just that.

  Ria let go. Then quickly returned the support for her injured arm.

  Diplomatically, Alex didn’t comment. Instead she helped Ria back into her blouse.

  “Do you have a square or triangle of cloth I can use?” Alex asked the woman, who had watched every second.

  She hesitated, then reached into a bag beside her seat, digging until she came up with a piece of fabric with a tear in it. Alex folded it so the tear wouldn’t be strained, slipped it under Ria’s arm, then tied the ends around the back of her neck.

  “There. It’s not perfect. And it’s going to be awkward to do what we need to do to clean his wound—”

  Ria make a scoffing sound.

  “We have to do this together. We have to work together.”

  “I don’t need you. I could cauterize his wound myself if I wanted to.”

  Alex clamped her mouth closed to keep from pointing out Ria couldn’t do any cauterizing or much of anything else if Alex hadn’t fixed her shoulder. “Cauterize his wound and send the kid into shock if you don’t give him a worse infection than he already has. Fever. A worse fever than he already has,” she amended. “That wound needs to be cleaned.”

  “Cauterizing has been—”

  “You think I’d give you fire?” the woman snapped. “Never.”

  “—the way of all the units since the beginning of Now. It’s what the Tens should have done right away if they had half a brain among them.”

  The woman’s head came up, her glare hot and angry.

  “Will you shut up, Ria? For once? Just for once?” Alex jerked at the top of Ria’s sleeve—the one near her newly re-jointed shoulder—both to interrupt her and to move her farther away. “Do you ever think before you speak?”

  “No.”

  Alex stepped closer, so they were almost nose to nose. “We are going to help this boy, and that’s going to help Kel. You are not going to argue, and you’re not going to mouth off again to this woman or any of the other Tens. Or to me.”

  “How do you know they’ll do what she said? How do you know it will do Kel any good? How do you know—?”

  “We’re going to try. That’s what I know. Now. Do whatever it is you do to bring fire into your hands while I get the water.”

  Chapter 29

  “Ow!”

  Alex tried to keep her hands still against the burning, but for the third time, she jerked and water slopped over the edge of the small pot she held.

  Maybe she should give up. The woman had repeatedly refused to give them fresh water, declaring what was available was good enough.

  Alex was afraid it wasn’t. But boiling would make it okay.

  The woman, getting her voice back after staring in shock through the first two tries, demanded, “What are you doing? I said no fire.”

  “You said you wouldn’t give us fire. We’re making our own,” Ria said.

  “Can you turn it down?” Alex asked her. “So you don’t set my hands on fire.”

  “This sling is in the way.”

  “Leave it on. Your shoulder needs the support. If I bring the pot higher—”

  “Your hands shouldn’t be anywhere around there. Stop holding the pot,” the woman said. “Put the fire under the water. Don’t you two know anything?”

  “Of course. Like the soup pots.” Alex looked around for something to hold the pot.

  “We’re not cooks,” grumbled Ria.

  “You’re not sensible, either.”

  “Ria.” Alex shouted to stop her from going after the woman. “Get that chair and tear out the seat. We’ll find something to hold the pot and you can put your fire under it and—”

  “You are not tearing out the seat of the chair.” The woman rose. “Stay there. Don’t move.”

  She returned in a minute with a metal tripod. It worked perfectly.

  While Ria heated the water, Alex started on the woman about yarrow.

  After her first dozen nos, Alex sensed a weakening.

  Alex had started by saying she had to go out to pick it. She’d never wanted to do that, since she had no clue what yarrow looked like, but she’d read that part of negotiating was having something you were willing to give up.

  She hoped now was the time to give in on what she never wanted.

  “Okay, have someone else pick it,” she said with fake exasperation. “But they have to get a lot—more than they think they might want—and make sure it’s prime plants.”

  “Don’t you want the blooms?”

  “Of course,” Alex agreed quickly. “Blooms from the best plants.”

  The woman stood and went out of the room without word. Alex heard her issue orders, including “more than you think you might want” and “blooms from the best plants.”

  By the time the water was boiled and a second pot started, the blonde guard delivered a large basket full of blooms, along with a look of grim disapproval.

  “You’re going to have to clean his wound,” Alex said to Ria.

  “Why do I have to—?”

  “Because it’s going to hurt him and I’ll have to hold him. You want to try wrestling him with your shoulder? Because—”

  “I will hold him,” the woman interrupted. “But if you hurt him—”

  “I have to,” Alex told her. Then she had a thought. “But not as much as cauterizing would.”

  It ended up taking the woman holding his shoulders, Ria sitting on his legs, and Alex doing her best to get as much of the boiled water—still warm but no longer hot—around and in the wound.

  It looked redder and angrier when they were done.

  Alex placed a clean cloth over the site and let him rest—as well as the woman and Ria—while she ground the yarrow.

  She ground and ground with the mini stone club the woman gave her. She remembered something about a pestle and mortar from one of the teachers talking about old-fashioned ways to make medicines. She had no idea which she held tight in her cramping hand. What she would give for a food processor.

  She finally got the pieces small enough so it wouldn’t be piling flowers on his wound. Adding the boiled water produced a paste-like substance.

  She washed her hands again—to the amusement of the woman—then used her fingers to place the poultice on the wound.

  The boy fretfully resisted at first, but went still when this maneuver didn’t cause him further pain.

  Done. At last. She covered the concoction with a cloth and sat back. Now to see if Speedo knew what he was talking about.

  Alex woke with a jerk of surprise that she’d fallen asleep.

  It was deep dark. And very quiet.

  She sucked in a breath of fear. She eased closer, trying to see if the boy’s chest was rising and falling. It was too dark to be sure. But then she heard his regular breathing.

  There was something else different…

  She didn’t have the energy to track down what it was.

  He was alive and breathing. That’s what mattered.

  Feeling as if she moved in slow motion, she mixed another batch of poultice, removed what was there, washed the area again with now-cooled boiled water, and applied the fresh poultice.

  The boy never stirred.

  The second time she woke, with light streaking in through the log joints, she realized the small room smelled strongly of sweat—her’s, Ria’s, the woman’s, the boy’s.

  Her nose wrinkled at the odor…then stopped. She was smelling sweat because the overriding something-rotting smell was nearly gone. Not completely, but so much better.

  She carefully removed the poultice.

  Ria came up behind her, and the woman leaned over to look.

  The wound might be smaller. Though it could have been an illusion because the redness around it had definitely subsided, drawing down the overall area affected.

  “What…?” the boy muttered. The first recognizable word they’d heard from him.

  “You hold still. Let her do her work,” the woman said with a restraining hand to his forehead—restraining and checking, Alex realized, when the woman added, “Fever’s down.”

  After Alex applied a fresh poultice, Ria said, “I’ll keep watch now. You two sleep.”

  Around noon, Alex took over again, letting Ria sleep.

  She finished the latest poultice change.

  The boy was definitely improving. The infection was abating. That smell was barely discernible…the other smells stronger.

  “You two fight like sisters.”

  Alex sat back at the woman’s unexpected words. “What?”

  The woman jerked her head toward Ria sleeping against the wall. “You and her. You’re going to say you’re nothing alike, but you are.”

  They weren’t anything alike, but that wasn’t what surprised her about the woman’s words.

  “You know about sisters?”

  The woman ducked her head. Alex was sure she wasn’t going to answer, that she’d pretend she never said anything.

  “Tens know sisters,” she said. “Or brothers. Most of us, anyway. If you could pin them down, a lot of Nines do, too. Some of the other Units. At least until you get down to the lower numbers. Being Ones and Twos and such, they turn everything upside down and make what they don’t know into a virtue, giving them another chance to think they’re better than everyone else.”

  Alex side-stepped Unit politics. “What—how do you know?”

  “Same way you do. We remember.”

  “Nines don’t—”

  “I said same way you do.” The woman smiled without humor. “You think word hasn’t gotten around that you’re from Beyond?”

  From Beyond. Different. Strange. What she’d always tried to hide, to pretend didn’t exist… She pushed it all back.

  “What do you remember?” She spoke so quietly she wasn’t sure the woman heard.

  The answer came back as quietly. “My sister.”

  “But she’s not here?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Was she?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will.” She narrowed her eyes at Alex. “Could be you already do. Either way, no more talk. But don’t be so sure the Nines do not remember.”

  “But—”

  “No more.”

  The woman wrapped the shawl tighter around her shoulders, closed her eyes, then dropped her chin.

  By her deepened breathing, she was asleep almost immediately.

  Alex remained awake, on watch. But also caught by that one word.

  Remember.

  The Tens remembered. Some of the Nines and Eights, but not the lower numbered Units.

  The woman remembered her sister. A sister who was not in Togwotee.

  Alex felt on the edge of something. If she reached for it…

  She pulled in a breath.

  She needed to watch the boy.

  She’d think later.

  The woman left them with the boy for more than an hour.

  When she returned, she wore fresh clothes, had clearly bathed, and carried clean bedding for the boy.

  Late in the day, the scarred Ten came again, presaged by the guards snapping to alertness out in the tent.

  He shot a narrow-eyed look at Alex and Ria as he passed them on his way to the boy.

  He went down on one knee beside the bedroll, his back to them.

  Alex couldn’t make out the words he spoke to the boy. At the end, his head came up, as if making eye contact with the woman, who certainly was looking at him.

  He stood abruptly and strode to the door. The guard jumped ahead to open it. The scarred Ten was partway through when he stopped.

  Without turning around, he said, “The small improves.”

  “Yes, he does,” Alex said against a suddenly tightened throat.

  He nodded and started off again.

  “What about Kel?” she called after him.

  Did she imagine a slight hesitation before he kept going? The guard closed the door.

  Chapter 30

  “No!”

  Ria’s cry pulled Alex out of her sleep, up to her feet, prepared to battle.

  The head guard had a wrenching hold on Ria’s arm.

  “Let her go. Don’t—”

  “Quiet,” the woman ordered in a harsh whisper. “You’ll wake him, you fool.”

  The last was aimed at the guard, who ducked his head, but kept a stubborn hold on Ria. “I’m taking them, but there’s no reason to tiptoe with Nines—”

  “There’s every reason if you want to keep your post.” Apparently satisfied that had quieted him, the woman huffed her disgust. “Let her loose. And you, girl, stop fighting. Go with them, both of you. They’ll take you to the bathhouse. Wash yourselves and put on these clothes from your packs.”

  The woman’s expression made it clear she wasn’t doing this for Alex and Ria’s comfort, but to spare herself the smell and, possibly, the sight.

  The guards accompanied them to another area of the encampment. Each step of the way they were stared at. Curiosity and suspicion were universal. Some of the looks added hatred. But a few were not only less harsh, but—accompanied by whispers of, “Did you hear they helped the small who lingered?”—almost grateful.

  She tried to catch Ria’s eyes, to see if she heard the words, but the other girl was looking at everything around them while trying to pretend she wasn’t.

  At a door to a rectangular log building, they stopped.

 

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