by Everly Frost
“It’ll be less likely to follow us out here. The bears aren’t as agile on flat land. They prefer the slopes. Of course, there shouldn’t be one behind us either, so be ready for anything. Do you think you’re still protected enough by nectar that you’d heal if you were harmed?”
“Um…” I didn’t want to look at my hands to check if my blue-lit skin had faded completely. “I think so.”
“If you have any doubt, please let me know. After everything you’ve survived, I don’t want to lose you now.”
Emerging from the dim tunnel below, the light was almost too bright. I squinted against it, assessing our surroundings. Behind us, I made out the distant shape of the train track running alongside the mountains, headed inland toward the towers to the far right of our position. The trains were steam-powered, running on wads of fuel made up of the marsh plant that grew in ponds around Starsgard.
I wasn’t entirely sure of my location right then, but I suspected I was farther inland than I’d ever been. Judging by that, the towers I could see were most likely part of the central northern region. Much farther east, Councilor Naomi’s region was located against the border between Starsgard and Seversand. She’d told me she lived in a tower on top of one of the highest mountains in Starsgard and that she would house Seth’s sleeping body underneath it.
“Where exactly are we?” I asked.
Snowboy drew my attention to the mountains ahead of us, gesturing from left to right in a wide expanse as I took in the impossibly high crests bathed in snow.
“That’s the snow belt. It’s made of the tallest mountains in Starsgard and stretches the entire width of the country. The towers you see over there belong to Councilor Zachary. Further east are Councilor Naomi’s. The only tower located north of the snow belt is ours.”
His expression grew stern. “The snow belt cuts us off from the rest of Starsgard—which is a good thing—but to get home we have to pass across it. Way down the other side of the belt, our tower is on the peak closest to the ocean. It’s a bit warmer there. And by that I mean the grass actually grows there.”
“So it’s on the beach?”
“Not if you call a cliff ‘beach.’”
“Okay.” I grimaced. “How long will it take?”
“Hopefully we’ll make it over the belt by tomorrow morning—but only if we have help.”
“What help?” The words had barely left my mouth when movement drew my attention. A round, white object sped down the mountain about a half-mile to our left—close enough to see, but far enough that I wasn’t immediately concerned. The object looked like a large snowball and my first thought was of an avalanche, but there was something strange about it. I could only imagine what a real avalanche looked like, but I didn’t think falling snow would change course, veering down the mountain in a controlled zigzag like this thing did.
“Down!” Snowboy grabbed me and pulled me to the ground. I sank only a little, quickly discovering that the snow was shallow and wouldn’t hide me at all.
“What is it?” I hissed.
“Another mountain bear,” he growled.
Chapter Two
THE BLOOD pounded in my ears as we waited.
“Stay still,” Snowboy whispered.
Surprisingly, the distant object skidded to an abrupt halt mid-fall, spraying up powdery white ice all around it. Its shape changed, unfurling, and morphed into something incredibly big. It paused, waiting. I could just make out the shape of a head tipped with a nose, sniffing the air and surveying its surroundings. Finally, it resumed its round shape, once more a snowball, zipping across the side of the mountain and out of sight.
The distant animal didn’t reappear and finally Snowboy relaxed beside me. He jumped to his feet and brushed powder from his chest. A few droplets gleamed there, melted against his skin, and I marveled at the fact that he was still warm enough to melt ice.
Not like me. I shivered as the cold seeped into me for the first time. The jacket I’d thought would keep me warm didn’t seem to be making any difference at all. “Are you seriously telling me that thing was a bear?”
“They move by rolling themselves into a ball.” He patted his elbows. “They have bones that jut out of their bodies at strategic points so that they can change course quickly. It makes them dangerously fast. Trust me, you don’t want to see them up close. The snow belt’s their territory.”
He’d said that before—that the bears didn’t leave the snow belt—but the full meaning of his words was only now sinking in. “Wait. They live in the snow belt and we have to travel across it? We have to walk through the place where they live.”
He laid a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “We’ll be okay. I promise. There’s a way through. But first we have to do something about your clothing.”
My bright puffer jacket was like a glowing beacon.
“You need to keep your body warmth in so you can’t take it off. Which leaves you with two choices.” He contemplated me for a moment. “You can layer up in the gear I packed for you. It’ll keep you warm and it’s white so you’ll blend in. Or…” He reached into his pack. “You can chew on this.”
He handed me what appeared to be a piece of gum shaped into a ball the size of a pearl. Except that it was black.
“Is that nectar?”
“Yes.”
I stepped away from him. The rose petals hadn’t contained enough nectar to create the usual fiery reaction I experienced when I took nectar. I’d burned cold and slow, but what Snowboy offered me now looked dangerous. “I … Surely you saw what happened when you injected me at the festival.”
He gave me a quizzical look. “Actually, I didn’t stick around. I couldn’t chance anyone seeing me. One way we keep the balance of power in our favor is by not revealing our existence. Once people know about us, we won’t be able to use that as a threat anymore. You saw how scared Naomi was that I’d show myself to her staff. As soon as I knew you’d healed, I got out of there.”
“Well, you must have traveled pretty far and pretty fast not to see what happened afterwards.”
“Far and fast is what I do,” he said, but his expression was wary now.
I sighed and closed his hand over the ball of nectar, pushing it away from me. “Then you really don’t want me to eat that.”
He studied me. “I have a million questions right now. And I’m suddenly regretting not sticking around to see what’s made you so scared of this. But we need to keep moving and I won’t ever force you to do something you don’t want to do. So…”
He tucked the ball of nectar away and reached for my backpack instead, pulling it open. “This snowsuit is on the large side, so it should fit over the jacket you’re wearing. Put the pants on too—they’ll fit over your leggings and you can pull them tight at the bottom around your boots to keep the warmth in. You might not need the mask and goggles yet, but put them on sooner rather than later. Don’t worry; the gloves are designed to let your hands function properly.”
I accepted his help pulling on the white puffer jacket, acknowledging that I felt warmer with it on.
Snowboy gave a nod of approval. “It won’t stop the bears scenting you, but at least you’ll be warm and blend in much better. Now we need to get to those towers over there.”
“Towers? But aren’t we going through the belt?” I surveyed the towers as we turned in that direction. They were close enough to be part of bear territory but were disconnected from the snow belt.
“We need to get to the nearest fuel marsh.” Snowboy urged me into a walk across the flat expanse, studying my movements as I navigated through the thickening snow cover.
“You know how I said the bears have an incredibly good sense of smell? Well, the only scent the bears associate with a predator—the only scent they fear—is that of the fuel marsh. Every tower has a marsh pond, right? The bears aren’t afraid of anything else. Nothing. Which is why we need to head over there and collect some marsh leaves to carry with us through the belt. It’s on
e of the ways they keep the bears away from those towers. The bears will stay away from us too.”
“I hope there’s a fuel marsh near your tower then.”
“Our tower,” he said. “It’s yours too. And, yeah. We have a fuel marsh. Our marsh grows all sorts of things.”
The electrocution device that Michael’s father had implanted into Michael’s spine was a bug grown in a fuel marsh. I’d learned that the fuel marsh not only powered so much of Starsgard’s towers and trains, but it was also the environment they used to grow and harbor organic weapons. Bugs. I still didn’t know how Michael’s dad had got hold of the bug or the marsh to keep it alive, but I’d learned that the marsh plant was used as a source of growth for a range of biological weapons.
I glanced to the snow belt on our left, attempting to judge the distance from it to the towers.
“Nobody in the south ever talked about bears. I know you said they stay away from the marsh, but I can’t believe I didn’t hear anything about them.”
“The bears don’t come down this side of the belt. Or at least, they never did before today. Like I said, they stay away from the marsh plants, but they’re also programmed not to migrate beyond the belt. The temperatures here are higher than within the belt and the bears don’t like the warmer air.”
“How do you know so much about them?”
“The tower where we live was where the bears were created.”
Ruth had said something similar to me. When she’d first spoken about Tower 177, she’d said that the tower was destroyed by the very weapons they’d created there. She’d said that it was a defensive place overgrown with moss and that the weapons that had destroyed it were still there.
Snowboy continued. “We’ve managed to salvage a lot of old files and study them. The bears are designed to remain located within the snow belt. Their purpose is to provide a means of protecting Starsgard’s uninhabited northern border. Basically, to stop anyone getting past. It would be unlikely for Evereach or Seversand to attack from the sea, let alone get past the mossy cliffs, but the bears are there just in case.”
He squinted against the glare and pointed across the shallow bed of snow in the direction of the nearest tower, which was still a mile away. “There’s an outlying fuel marsh over that way. Once we grab some leaves, we’ll be able to take the pass under the mountain. It’ll shelter us and the bears will leave us alone. Then I’ll call for help.”
It took another hour to reach the edge of the plain near the fuel marsh. The flat land ended in a valley and we dropped onto our stomachs at the precipice, surveying the gully below and the marsh pond spread across the bottom of it. The nearest tower was still a long distance away and the train line ran around the other side of it.
“We shouldn’t be seen from this distance, but let’s take things carefully,” Snowboy said as we descended into the valley.
Keeping my balance on the stony path, I expected to feel a gush of wind that told me my body print was being taken. Every corridor around the Starsgardian towers used the wind to detect someone’s presence and identify who they were as surely as if their fingerprint had just been taken. I braced for it, but there was nothing, only a calm silence, and I was relieved that the usual tower defenses didn’t extend this far beyond the towers.
I couldn’t even begin to imagine the repercussions if I were discovered alive.
“This marsh is pretty much left to go wild,” Snowboy said as we approached the side of it. “We know it’s here to make absolutely sure the bears stay away, but we imagine it’s officially explained as a backup fuel source. There are several marshes all at a distance from the tower as well as another line of marshes much closer.”
I tried not to hold my breath as I approached the edge of the pond. The afternoon sun had shrunk from the bottom of the gully and I was glad because any heat on the marsh leaves could only make the smell of them so much worse. It was an oily pungent scent that made the hairs on my arms stand on end.
Snowboy leaned down and studied his reflection in the pond. He urged me down beside him. The marsh plants grew from the bottom of the pond, all the way up above its surface, appearing as tufted green bushes. Some were as small as my fist, but others rose several feet above the surface. The tallest were in the middle of the lake and Snowboy gestured at them.
“They get bigger faster if you don’t pick the leaves from them. The smaller ones are either new or we’ve used them more often.”
I noted that most of the bushes at the edge were small, but the rest were large. It was certainly a wild marsh.
“Big or small, the leaves work the same,” he said. “No need to go swimming for the large ones. In fact, don’t ever go swimming in this stuff. You’ll stink for days.”
He swirled the water for a moment but only immersed the tips of his fingers in it. “I’m checking for bugs,” he explained. “There was this blood-sucking bug once. It was hiding under the leaves on the surface and I didn’t notice it until it got a good drink out of me. If I didn’t need to check for those, I wouldn’t touch the water at all.” He scrunched his face up in disgust. “Sorry, you’ll have to put up with the smell.”
I screwed up my own face with an answering grimace. “Thanks for the warning about the bugs.”
He must have been satisfied there weren’t any blood-suckers lurking under the plants, because he plucked several leaves from the nearest tuft. He handed me three of them and I allowed them to rest in my palm. They were deep green, short, rounded, and thick.
“Is this all I need?”
“That’s all it takes.”
In the fading light it was hard to see, but I was sure the leaves in my palm also contained the inky lines I’d seen in the plants in southern Starsgard. “They have nectar in them.”
He studied the ones he held, nodding. “It looks like they do.”
“How is it spreading? Where’s it coming from?”
He leaned back on his heels. “I don’t…”
Just then, a distant horn sounded as a steam train bellowed a clear note into the crisp air. Instinctively, I ducked and as I did so, my hand brushed the surface of the marsh. I pulled up as fast as I could, but the scent, so much worse when I was close to the water, assaulted me.
That smell… It transported me back to the Terminal in Evereach. Officer Cheyne, the man working with Michael’s father, had leaned over me, standing way too close, telling me I was the weapon they’d needed for so long. Telling me that Seversand would think twice about attacking Evereach now. I tried to shake it off, tried to forget his voice. He said that Seversand had been seeking a new weapon ever since their nuclear bomb failed, that they’d been threatening Evereach for years.
I swayed and closed my eyes a moment, bracing myself. I had to get used to it if I wanted to carry the leaves with me all the way north. I just had to push the memories away…
Snowboy’s hand rested on my shoulder, concern filling his voice. “Are you okay?”
I opened my eyes, blinking away my tears.
He said, “I know this stuff really stinks, but you’ll get used to it. We can’t take any chances.”
I bit my lip before I tried to explain. “There was a man back in Evereach who grew bugs in a stash of these plants. I’ll never forget how he smelled. It was like oily tar. It was like … this.” I gestured to the plants as they swayed in the sudden breeze. “He used the bug to hurt someone I care about.”
“The guy you left behind.”
“Michael.” Just saying his name hurt and I could only hope it would get easier. “His name’s Michael.”
I shoved the leaves into my backpack, wanting to show Snowboy that I could get past the memories and focus on what we needed to do.
“I’m sorry this brings back such bad memories,” he said, and I nodded, unable to talk about it anymore.
Another clear note of the train’s horn echoed across the distance as we turned away from the marsh, but Snowboy stared in the direction of the sound, his eyes wide
.
He was suddenly agitated. “It’s the trains! They’re spreading the nectar!”
I frowned. “How?”
“They’re powered using wads of fuel marsh. But whatever’s left of the fuel at the end of the day gets dumped into the nearest marsh. A northern train can drop contaminated marsh right into a southern pond. It starts when we bring contaminated leaves through the snow belt and drop them right here and they grow from this marsh to the next.” He pointed to the chain of them leading closer to the tower. “Then the trains pick it up and drop it in the south. That’s how the nectar’s spreading. The trains are doing it.”
“I can see how that would be possible,” I said. “Especially since the marsh plant grows so fast.”
“Well, I’m glad to have figured it out,” Snowboy said, “but if I’m right, then there’s nothing we can do to stop the spread. It’s taken on a life of its own now.”
He took my hand. “C’mon, the sun’s going to set soon and we need to be inside the belt before that happens.”
Chapter Three
WE MADE it to the top of the gully and hiked across the plain, heading in the direction of the snow belt. As we neared it, the mountains soared overhead, drowned in ice.
Finally, we reached an opening in the rocks. It was wide enough to allow snowflakes to float down into it. Snowboy seemed content to hum to himself as he led the way and I wondered what had happened to calling for help. I kept a close watch on our surroundings, but it seemed that Snowboy was right about the marsh leaves. There were no more sightings of strange snowballs morphing into mountain bears.
An hour later, the sun had all but crept behind the mountain, leaving us in dim light with nothing ahead of us but the same winding passage that was behind us. I pulled on the gloves and facemask to keep me warm and discovered that the gloves were flexible and easy to wear. Eventually the light became so feeble that I could barely see where I was going.