The Shattered Mountain (fire and thorns)

by Rae Carson

  “We should get moving,” Reynaldo warns. “The water is still rising.”

  The sky chooses that moment to dump vicious streamers of rain, and Mara blinks water from her eyes. “The others? Did they . . .”

  “All safe on the ridge.”

  She breathes relief. “Let’s go, then.” To Carella’s daughter, she says, “Can you climb?”

  The girl coughs one more time, but she nods, and Mara marvels at her bravery. She can’t be more than five or six, but she stayed behind to help everyone else. Now her lungs must be on fire, her head pounding, her shoulder stinging, but instead of fear or pain in her eyes, Mara sees only determination.

  “What’s your name?” Mara asks.

  “Teena.”

  “All right, Teena. Let’s get up on that ridge, then we’ll let you rest.”

  12

  THE tiny girl’s name is Marlín. The brothers Reynaldo discovered in the cellar are Benito and Hando. There are also Alessa, Quintoro, Rosa, Marco, and Jaime. They sit huddled on the ridge, shivering in the rain, while Mara checks everyone over. The gash on Teena’s head is not deep, so Mara tears a strip from Julio’s saddle blanket and uses it to stanch the flow of blood.

  “I’m not sure what to do about your shoes,” she says to the girl.

  Teena shrugs. “I don’t need shoes,” she says, kicking off her remaining one. Then her face freezes. Her chin trembles.

  “What is it?” Mara says. “Are you hurt somewhere else?”

  She shakes her head, staring at the discarded shoe. It lies on its side, a leather tassel dragging in the mud. It is worn through at the heel. She has been walking in near-useless shoes the whole time. “Mamá and me, we went to the tanner to get my feet measured. Because I’m so big now. But the bad men came.”

  “We’ll get you some new shoes. It might take a while, but we’ll do it.” Even as she says it, Mara knows it won’t be enough. It’s not the shoes that Teena misses.

  “She let herself die on purpose,” Teena says, still staring at the shoes. “So we could get away.”

  Mara’s throat tightens. “She loved you very much.” She can hardly get the words out. What must it be like to have parents who would sacrifice their own lives for you?

  Little Marco has an ugly gash just below his knee. The others seem to be in relatively good shape, though they huddle together in shivering groups, waiting for the rain to stop. Mara grimaces. It’s safe enough to have a fire, now that clouds choke the sky. But unless they find shelter, the driving rain makes it impossible.

  Quintoro wraps an arm around his little sister, Rosa, who has been quietly crying ever since they escaped the flood. Adán digs at the earth with a stick, poking and shoving in frustrated bursts. Julio sits propped against the trunk of a small cottonwood, eyes closed, his beautiful face raised to the rain. His breathing is shallow, his face pale.

  “Everybody up,” Mara orders, getting to her feet. “It’s too cold to sit still.” And too depressing.

  “We need rest,” Reynaldo says. “The little ones are exhausted.”

  Mara shakes her head. “We’re exposed up here on the ridge. Once the storm is over, we’ll be visible to anyone within half a day’s travel. So we move now and rest when we find shelter.”

  Everyone grumbles as they get to their feet. After she helps Julio stand, he wraps his arms around her and leans against her. His skin is feverish, and she can feel the pulse at his neck—fast and fluttery like butterfly wings. “I love you,” he says.

  “Prove it by getting well,” she answers.

  She and Adán help him mount the horse. “You should tie me down,” Julio says, even as he lists to the right.

  Mara swallows hard. Then she mounts up behind him and puts an arm around his waist. He winces at the contact. “I’ll hold you” Mara says.

  They set off down the mountain. There is no trail, so they must go carefully, slipping through mud and navigating outcroppings and stunted trees. Below them, the fault has become a churning river, thick with mud and detritus. Above, the sky continues to dump rain. Mara wonders if she’ll ever be warm and dry again.

  She holds Julio close to keep him upright, feeling his heartbeat against her chest. There is no way to avoid the wound on his lower back, and though he is bravely stoic, the occasional jostling step of their mount makes him gasp. She buries her face between his shoulder blades and breathes his scent, wishing she could somehow send her own warmth and vitality into his body.

  They walk for hours, until Alessa plunks onto the ground and bursts into tears.

  Reynaldo hurries over to her.

  “What is it?” Mara calls.

  “Her feet,” Reynaldo says. “She’s been walking with blisters. Now her feet are ripped to shreds.”

  “My feet hurt too,” says Rosa.

  “Mine too,” says Hando.

  Mara takes a deep breath. “Everyone’s feet hurt,” she says. “But we have to be brave. Alessa, if you promise to hold on to Julio and keep him from falling, you can trade places with me.”

  Alessa brightens. “I can do that.”

  The saddle isn’t big enough for two adults anyway, and the edge had been digging into Mara’s rear. She plants a kiss behind Julio’s ear and dismounts, then helps Alessa up behind him.

  “Can I ride the horse too?” someone asks.

  “Me too!” says another.

  Mara is careful to keep her voice calm and patient. “When Alessa’s feet are better, everyone can take turns helping Julio.”

  Hando eyes the other packhorse, but he says nothing. Mara will let the children ride the second horse if she has to, but she’s not sure the rest of them are up to carrying the supplies. Not without more food to give them strength.

  She takes the lead this time, keeping an eye out for shelter as she goes, but her heart is sinking. She wants to save them. Every single one. She hoped a flash flood would be the worst they encountered. But maybe it will be something little that eventually kills them all. Something insignificant. Like blistered feet.

  The clouds are beginning to break and the sun is low on the horizon when Mara spots a large overhang of layered sandstone. The ground beneath is not entirely dry, but it’s flat and littered with deadfall that has been trapped there by the wind. Some of it might be dry enough for a fire.

  She sets the children to work collecting wood while she and Adán quickly line a pit. Within an hour, they are crowded around a cheery fire. Several peel off outer clothing layers and drape them on nearby rocks to dry. As the sun edges behind the shattered peak, Mara finds a bit of gladness inside herself, for they are nearly to the bottom of the mountain and will soon move into the desert.

  Her flour sack is soaked, and the remaining flour will turn moldy and useless for baking, so she scoops out a bunch of the sticky stuff and stirs it into a potful of boiling water. At least water is no longer in short supply.

  She adds bits of bacon and a few of her precious spices. The result is disgusting—more paste than soup, with a gritty texture that sticks in her teeth. But it’s nourishing, and even though the children wince and swallow quickly, they don’t complain. Everyone goes to sleep without the empty ache of hunger.

  They wake to morning sun and screaming.

  Mara launches upward, reaching for her bow and seeking the source of danger even before her mind is fully awake. Deep in the overhang, pressed against the sandstone wall, little Hando sobs, clutching his right arm to his stomach.

  Rosa stands beside him, looking down in horror. She’s the one who is screaming.

  “What is it?” Mara demands. “What’s wro—”

  Something behind Hando moves. No, writhes. Several somethings. Twisting and sliding and . . .

  Vipers.

  “Be very, very still,” she says, though she knows it’s too late for him. “Everyone else get back. Now!”

  As they hasten to comply, something black and hot clouds Mara’s vision. She led them here. She made them take shelter beside a vipers’ n
est. She should have scouted the site thoroughly before bedding down.

  Mara creeps toward Hando, who is as still as a stone though tears leak from his pleading eyes. “That’s it, Hando. You’re doing fine.” Behind him, the vipers mix and tumble like giant worms. She hears the hiss of a rattle.

  “I’m going to reach down and snatch you up,” she says. “Ready?”

  He nods.

  Before her pounding heart can become paralyzing terror, she grabs his arms and yanks him backward. His feet drag as she darts from the overhang into a clear blue day.

  They need to get farther away. Snakes can move with astonishing speed if they want to. But she only has moments left to save Hando. She compromises, dragging him only a few steps more.

  “Show me the bite,” she orders. “Everyone else, keep an eye on those snakes! Grab some rocks in case they move toward us.”

  Hando pushes up his sleeve, revealing a red, swollen spot with two tiny puncture marks just below the elbow. A small snake, then. Maybe he didn’t take much venom.

  She grabs her knife from her belt, unsheathes it. “This is going to hurt, but I have to do it now. Understand?”

  He nods, lower lip quivering.

  Hando hisses as she sweeps her blade across the bite. The skin parts, and blood wells. She gives a quick thought to possible cavities in her teeth but decides it doesn’t matter; her larger body can handle the venom much better than his anyway.

  She places her lips on his filthy arm, sealing the wound. Closing her eyes against revulsion, she sucks a mouthful of blood. Coppery tanginess bursts warm across her tongue as she turns her head to spit. She sucks again. Spits again.

  Hando whimpers as she works. “Kill as many as you can!” someone yells. “But don’t get too close.” Rocks pound the ground nearby, and she almost looks up to see what’s happening, but she forces herself to keep sucking and spitting. The urge to swallow is almost unbearable, even though the taste is revolting.

  At last she moves her head away. “Water!” she yells, and a water skin is placed in her hand as if by magic. She rinses and spits several times. Finally she lets herself swallow.

  She pours the rest of the water over Hando’s arm, then pokes around the wound, encouraging the cleansing blood to flow.

  Hando asks in a trembling voice, “Am I going to die?”

  Yes, probably. She reaches down to cup his chin and looks him directly in the eye. “If the bite wasn’t deep, if the venom was close to the skin, then maybe not. But it will hurt badly for about an hour. It will be the worst hurt you’ve ever had.” Of its own accord, her thumb sweeps along his jawline. “When the pain starts to go away, you’ll get sick. I’ll need you to be very brave.”

  He nods up at her. Already his face is sallow and his breath comes fast. He says, “Thank you, Mara.”

  She gives his chin a gentle squeeze and lets it go. Hando is such a beautiful boy, with a delicate cast to cheek and chin, and eyelashes so thick that his eyes seemed rimmed with kohl. He will break many hearts someday, if he has a chance to grow up.

  “We got us some snake meat,” Reynaldo says at her shoulder.

  She turns to find him holding up a limp viper, its scaled white belly glistening in the sunshine, and she flinches back.

  “How many did you kill?”

  He grins. “Five.”

  Heat spreads across her neck and shoulders, and she can’t seem to get enough air. Some venom got inside her after all. Or maybe her body is merely rebelling against the fact that these children risked their lives so they could eat well tonight.

  13

  MARA unloads the second packhorse and distributes everything among the remaining healthy children to carry. Then she helps Hando mount, hoping and praying that no one else becomes injured, for they are out of horses.

  By nightfall, his arm has swollen to twice its size. Everyone else feasts on roasted snake, but Hando can’t keep anything down. He thrashes on the ground, moaning, only half conscious.

  She checks Alessa’s feet. They are badly blistered, but the blisters seem to have drained well, and Alessa claims they only hurt when she walks. Mara orders her to keep them clean.

  Next she settles beside Julio. He lies on his side by the fire, unable to sit up. “Hello, beautiful,” he whispers weakly.

  She traces his lips with her forefinger. “I have to check your back.”

  He nods.

  Carefully, she unwraps the bandages. The entry site has puffed out like a cauliflower, and something that is part blood, part pus leaks from the gash. It’s badly infected, in spite of her earlier efforts. If they don’t get help soon, he’ll die.

  “How bad is it?” he says between gritted teeth.

  Mara is glad the dark hides her tears. “I think it’s getting better.”

  “Liar.”

  She rewraps the wound. There is nothing she can do for it.

  He says, “If I don’t make it, promise me—”

  “You’ll make it!” Her voice comes out angrier than she intends.

  “Mara. Love. This is a bad wound. A death wound. I need to know you’ll look out for Adán.”

  “I . . . of course.” Then she reaches over to flick his nose. “But I’m not giving up yet, you idiot.”

  He grins. Then his eyes flutter closed, and she hopes with all the hope in her heart that it’s a natural sleep and not a sickly one.

  14

  IT 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.<
br />
  “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.