A Liar's Twisted Tongue, page 2
I hear my stomach grumbling. There’s no way we could hunt again, not with the keepers. Dinner is normally the only meal we get, and just from trading for water and extra clothes, we didn’t make out quite as good as we usually do.
“Wella and Layla make it on one, easy,” Damien says quietly. The little ones, who are probably waiting back home for the water they were promised. Water they wouldn’t have got if Damien was caught.
It’s different for him than me. If anything happens to me, my mom would be fine. His family relies on him. Sure, his mom gathers, but plants aren’t enough to feed a family. And when the occasional survivor of a fire comes around for a healer, they don’t have much extra to offer in turn for her salves.
“Mom and I can split one,” I say.
“No,” Damien says. “No. You get two.”
With my stomach this empty, I’m in no position to argue, but Wella and Layla sharing one leaves him, Elliae, and his mom with one. He takes me back to my dwelling, and we unload the water, two austecs, and salt on the table, throwing a sheet over it in case of any snoops.
Before he leaves, I slip one austec back into the pack.
Night falls while I run my hand through the dirt, brushing away all the debris and filling the newly cleaned space with twigs and bark. I twirl a twig in the gap I made on a piece of wood, and when I see the glow of orange I place it on my pile of twigs and blow until fire catches. This used to feel silly, a Fire Folk using practical skills to start a fire. Now I worry I won’t have to do this much longer.
Mom has the austec skinned and on a stick, holding it over the fire. I tuck my knees into my chest and watch the flame. I try to ignore what it reminds me of, what it means to me now after ten nights of running from it in my dreams.
The dreams are only dreams, I tell myself. I’ll never be what I am in them. Even if I can start fires with my hands soon, I won’t kill anyone.
“You okay?” Mom asks, the fire turning her face orange.
“Yeah.”
“You’re looking at that fire like it’s going to burn you.”
“It might.” I smile to lighten the mood.
“Only if you fall in,” my mom says. “Is there something you want to tell me?”
I wish I could tell her. The dreams and the cut and the fire and the arson come to mind. All the things that occupy my brain when the distractions of the day die down. “Nothing comes to mind.”
“Your magic?”
I hold my hand tighter. “Still nothing.”
“Good,” she pauses, “good. Things are changing around here,” she says. “I saw more keepers today.”
I wonder if she knows Marice is dead and Sevyn is gone. “Oh.”
“I don’t think you should hunt tomorrow,” she whispers, making sure no easy ears nearby can hear. Nepenthe and their super senses.
“We need to eat,” I whisper back.
“Janice can get us berries.”
“She has Wella and Layla to worry about.”
“I’ll watch them while she gathers.” She turns the austec and starts cooking the other side. “It’ll be fine.”
“Won’t there be more work with the keepers here—”
She cuts me off. “No woods tomorrow. Understand? Stay close to home.”
I push away the thought those words bring. It’s just anxiety, I tell myself. But staying close to home normally means leaving home, in the end.
“Okay.”
The next morning, I wake up before my mom and begin braiding my hair—but I promised not to hunt today. In that, I promised not to worry about our empty stomachs and to surrender to the role of the child despite my not feeling like one.
Despite being only a year away from adulthood in the eyes of the Fire Folk.
I’m a quarterway through the braid when I stop. Like old times, I climb into my mom’s bed. She mumbles something and turns to me, groggily wrapping her arm over me.
“I missed this baby girl,” she mumbles.
“Me too.”
My own grogginess overcomes me and I find myself falling to sleep in her arms like I’m a kid again.
I wake once more, this time to the familiar feeling of Mom tugging my hair into a braid. I smile to myself when her fingers run along my scalp, sending shivers down my arm.
“You have the best hair to braid,” Mom whispers. She used to say this all the time.
I fiddle with my fingers while she fiddles with my hair and when she finishes I turn to face her. Her soft hand caresses my cheek.
“I love you,” she tells me. “It’s you and me against the worlds.”
It is. It really is. It always has been. Everything we do is for one another. It’s that love that makes me think I could tell her the truth—that we don’t have long until I die. Because that’s the truth. That’s my magic. Whatever happens between that ending and now could be terrible, but she deserves to know that it’s going to end.
I open my mouth to tell her. The only words that fall out are, “And I love you.”
Mom smiles. She wouldn’t have smiled if I told her the truth.
I take the long walk to school. I have to see the posts. Make sure Marice is dead for myself—if they haven’t already hauled his body off.
I can smell the corpses and blood before I can make out what I’m seeing. Rotting Folk don’t smell much different than rotting corenths. When I get closer, I see the thirteen bodies still tied to the top of the wooden posts by their bloodied wrists, their backs barely backs anymore, more a mangled mess of muscle, blood, and bone.
My own back prickles.
But I see Marice’s face, his light-brown hair, and his graying beard. With that, I head for school.
More posters are up in the classroom. There’s a drawing of a glass bottle, one of a bow and arrow, and one of a felled tree, each with six words in red: If you see something, say something. A photo of the keepers, their gray suits and gray eyes, accompanied by red words: The face of justice.
I turn to Elliae, whose already usually white skin is paler than I’ve ever seen it.
“Damien isn’t in the woods, right?” I whisper.
“I don’t think so.” She leans closer to me. “You don’t think they’re here because of you guys, do you?”
“We’re not the only ones who hunt.” That is true, but we are the only ones who hunt every day. Our moms are Light Folk in a welders’ village, the only jobs that are available to them are packing the products the Fire Folk make. It pays even less than welding. There is no way we could not hunt.
Which means I don’t know how we’re going to eat tonight and I should’ve taken the two austecs yesterday.
The time passes fast, up until the point when I hear five taps from outside the glassless windows. Elliae says softly, “Don’t worry, I’ll cover for you.”
She always does, but this time it seems a little more dangerous.
I slip out of my usual hole in the wall, ignoring the influx of posters in the old room, and walk next to Damien. I’m prepared for him to tell me there’s a marenth or winster in the woods, because a bigger corenth like that is something he has no shot of taking down on his own, and I’m prepared to ask him if he’s dense.
But those aren’t the words that come out of his mouth.
“Your mom wanted me to get you. Said it was urgent.”
No. I stop so abruptly that Damien almost loses his balance trying to match my pace. He’s looking at me, expecting an explanation, and I’m looking at the homeless who line the septic, their missing limbs and decaying teeth, wondering how long I could survive as one of them. Because that’s what I’m about to be, considering that I won’t leave. Not this time.
“What was she doing?” I ask with my eyes ahead of me.
“She seemed scattered.”
Packing.
My entire life, it’s been one forced departure after another. It didn’t matter if I liked a place or hated it, we stayed until Mom said it was time to go, then we left. It’s a curse that’s followed me everywhere I’ve gone: the perpetual loss of everything I know. So when I look back at Damien, at his comforting brown eyes and shaggy auburn hair, I can’t help but grab his wrist and run, jerking him along with me into the woods.
“Hang on, Red,” he says with a laugh, but I can tell he’s concerned. I think we could survive in the woods. If I could figure out how to use the Flame I could cook our meals, maybe even kill some of the bigger corenths with it. We could do it. We wouldn’t be like the homeless living on the streets of the septic. We’d be like the corenths. Sure, hunted, but also free. I keep running.
The keepers don’t come this far into the woods, so when we’re almost to where we hunt in the mornings, I stop. Getting in isn’t the problem, it’s getting out, so I’ll convince him that we don’t have to get out.
“What is it?” he asks me breathlessly, but I say nothing. I don’t even shake my head, though I want to. Maybe I could just tell him about the dreams. Right here, right now. Say, Damien, I’ve been dreaming of starting fires and killing Folk. A lot of Folk. Do you still want to be my friend, or do you think I’m losing my mind?
“Will you stay here with me?” I say instead, looking down at the dirt. “Just for the night.”
He’s looking at me like I’ve just asked the impossible, and I’m trying hard not to show my desperation. A lump moves down his neck when he swallows.
“Yes,” he says, and I am in awe. That’s it. He can see how easy it would be to live here, and we can stay. I won’t have to lose anything.
We have hours until sundown, which means hours left to hunt, and all my worries of food for the night disappear. It’s better out here anyway, without keepers and with Damien.
Then he’s pulling something out of the bag. A handful of orange berries—which he must’ve gotten from his mom; a jug of nectar, which I have no idea where he got; and a bottle of rena.
A bottle of rena.
Rena is Lorucille’s makeshift alcohol for the poor, yet most of us here could never afford it. Damien must’ve read my face, because he says, “I traded a dagger for it.”
He only has two. Well, one now. One from his dad and one he traded for. I always used the latter, not because he didn’t let me use his dad’s, but because it never felt right.
“Why would you do that? You aren’t a droozy in hiding, right?” I joke with him, though I’m kind of serious. I can’t imagine why he would trade any dagger for a bottle of rena.
“No,” he laughs, “no. I noticed you’re on edge lately. I thought doing something fun for once could help.”
So much for hiding it. The way he’s looking at me is scaring me. His lips are slightly parted, and his naturally long and curled eyelashes make his eyes look almost romantic. If there were ever a time to tell the truth, this would be it. It’s funny, because I could, it wouldn’t take much work to say the words.
But it’s not just the words, and it’s not just the dreams, it’s what lies under them. It’s the fear. Not just about my powers materializing and not just the imminence of my death due to the Flame. It’s the murders, the endless murders. The proof on my palm that I am not regular. Maybe even more prone to death and destruction than the rest.
It’s showing him the target and handing him the knife.
“I have fun hunting,” I say, and for a moment it feels like nothing in the world has changed. For a moment, it feels like yesterday.
“It’s good to enjoy it.” Damien pulls the cork out of the glass bottle. “Because you’re not very good.” I can see the line of his smile behind the glass bottle. I smile back at him when he hands it to me. I’ve never had rena before, but I’ve always wanted to try it. It’s an ugly color, like someone added dirt to water, and it tastes like it too while also burning my throat. The few Folk I’ve met that have had vesi—the real alcohol from Soma—say that it goes down like silk. The rena feels like drinking the tart acid from an underripe orange berry.
“So what’s going on, Red? You ever gonna tell me?”
There are times when I want to tell you everything.
“What?” I smile and take another sip of the burning liquid, closing my wounded left hand so he doesn’t see the scar. “Nothing’s going on.”
Damien takes the bottle back and puts it in the leather bag before he scales up a tree like an austec. He looks down at me over his shoulder. “Coming?” The only time I ever climb trees is when I am looking for freshwater, and even then, I hate it. He still asks every time.
I shake my head no. He pulls his dagger from his boot and throws it down to me. Our routine. Only I feel guilty using his dad’s dagger after he traded his other for rena, for me, and I can’t even tell him why he thinks I need it.
I run my thumb over the orange stone engraved at the tip of the handle. Looks like a memor, one of Lorucille’s precious stones. It doesn’t belong in my hands. But when an austec falls from the tree, still squirming and unable to run, it’s my instincts that kick in and send the blade just under the ugly thing’s throat. The rustling leaves tell me Damien is climbing higher into the tree.
By the time he comes down, I’m starving, our bag is full, and the sun is setting. I shave a stick until it’s something sharp, start a fire, and Damien has an austec skinned. The purples and blues from the sunset are fading from the sky fast, and by the time I’m pulling a leg off the austec for myself, the sky is black.
When we get to the chewy, disgusting tail, Damien says, “Not it!” It’s funny, really; us and Elliae used to fight over who got the tail during the early days of hunting when there wasn’t enough food to go around. It got so bad our moms came up with a rotating system for us but never took the tail for themselves. Nowadays it doesn’t matter that no one wants to eat it, we would never waste it.
Besides, if I was hungrier, I’d fight for it.
My mouth waters as Damien grabs the orange berries and nectar. It isn’t every day that we get something sweet. He fills my palm with the berries and tells me the nectar is for after the rena. Smart. I try to take my time but end up shoveling the whole handful of berries into my mouth at once. And when the rena is in front of me, I find myself excited for the first time in the ten days since the dreams began.
We play a game Damien came up with—the one we always play when the mornings are slow, but with booze this time. One of us says three words and the other person has three chances to guess what the other is talking about. If you can’t, then you drink.
“Bright, cold, rock,” Damien says.
“The Stone of Light.” Soma’s Soul Stone.
“Good guess. But no.”
“Rock?” I ask.
“Is that a guess?”
“No,” I say seriously. “I’m thinking.”
He pushes his finger into the crease between my eyebrows, above my nose. “No need to get so perplexed.”
I scrunch my nose at him. Bright cold rock. The only thing I can think of is a Soul Stone, and the only one of those that would be considered cold is on Soma. Oh. “A moon,” I say.
Damien tips the bottle back. “That was fast.”
A moon is mysterious to us, seeing as we don’t have one on Lorucille.
Five sips later and I’m lying on the dirt with my head on Damien’s chest, watching the dancing stars. “That one looks like a soldier,” I say, pointing at a cluster of stars that looks like someone holding a sword.
“I’ve heard stories that they put the souls in the sky when they’re ready to rest,” Damien says, referring to the gods. There are three of them that everyone knows: the lunar goddess, Sulva; the solar god, Ayan; and the goddess of balance, Zola. No one talks much about them here besides my mom.
“That’s nice,” I say, but I don’t think it is.
“Des?” Damien says. His voice is soft, and it worries me. He also used my real name—well, part of it—instead of calling me Red. That means this is serious. I don’t want to do serious right now, but I flip on my stomach and look at him.
He doesn’t say anything, he just keeps staring. Until I finally lean in and press my lips to his.
I think I’ve thought about this a lot more than I’d care to admit.
I pull away. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.
Damien shakes his head, then grabs the back of mine, pulling me into him again. My lips grow numb against his—from the rena or the kisses, I’m not sure.
When Damien pulls away, he still holds the back of my head, and he says, “I wish we could stay like this forever.”
Perfect.
“We can,” I say softly.
He smiles at me and pushes a piece of my orange hair behind my ear. “I wish we could,” he says again.
“No, we really can.” I’m sitting up now. “We can hunt, I can cook. We could sleep under the stars. It would be easier than what we do now!”
“Okay,” he says, sitting up too. “What about Isa?” My mom, who is leaving, but I don’t say that. “Or Elliae? Wella? Layla? My mom? The five of them are probably worried beyond wit’s end. Just leaving for the night was a bad enough idea.”
I lean back, away from him. “You think this was a bad idea?”
“No, no, Des, that’s not what I mean.” I can hear in his voice that he’s being honest, but it’s not enough.
I could tell him that the second we go back to the village I’ll be gone. My mom will drag me away to a new place, saying it’s for my safety, and he’ll never see me again. But I know how my mom likes leaving. Without a trace. Just because I’ve made my choice doesn’t mean I will disrespect her.
So all I can do is convince him to stay here, with me.
“You’re never going to be anything there! A Light Folk in a welders’ land? You know you’ll never get ahead, always barely being able to feed your family, having to choose between food and winter blankets. And me? I’ll become a welder and die just like the rest of them. We’re both damned no matter what we choose, so why not choose something for ourselves?” I hope that the mention of the dead welders won’t anger him. I’ve never alluded to his dad like that before. But this is important.
“Are you kidding me?” he says, and I know instantly that I’ve angered him.
