Rae Carson: The Shattered Mountain

Reynaldo sighs. “What if he doesn’t come?”

“We’ll wait,” she repeats.

“But, Mara . . .”

“Two days. Give us two days.”

Reynaldo nods once, sharply. “Two days.”

TWO days later, the children are restless and hungry, the shallow, hastily dug latrine is full, and there is no sign of Julio. There is no sign of anyone else, either. Reynaldo and Adán scouted back toward the village to no avail. Mara searched the area around the cave but found only flood-tumbled boulders and dried brush. Though she says soothing words to the children, she has come to believe they are all who remain.

Overlooked, because they were the smallest and most helpless.

Mara goes through the motions of heating up leftover soup, breaking camp, and packing—all without speaking. She will do what she can to get the children to safety, because it is a purpose, something to focus her thoughts on. But after? She doesn’t know what comes after.

One little boy tugs on her shirt and asks, “Are we leaving today, Mara?” She can only nod wordlessly. She is an overfilled water skin, her sides stretched too thin from the pressure, and if she opens her mouth everything will come bursting out—grief, rage, despair.

They made their food stretch longer than they anticipated. Adán bagged two jerboas the previous day with his sling, and Mara made a stew of the tiny rodents. She made sure no one was looking when she slipped the hearts, livers, and even the wobbly stomachs into her pot. She made the children wash down their stew with a brisk juniper tea, and everyone went to sleep with full bellies.

Now she worries about water. The trickle running down the Shattermount’s giant fault will be dry in a day or so. They need another storm. But a storm on the Shattermount almost invariably means a flood.

“Which way?” Reynaldo asks as they gather on the ledge before setting off. “Do we stick to the ridge or climb down through the ravine?”

The mountain is not lush like its brothers farther east. It is a lone monolith, too near the desert. “We would be exposed on the ridge,” Mara says. “Visible to any Inviernos still in the area.” And the Inviernos are practiced archers—far more skilled than she is. They come from a place where wood is plentiful, and their beautiful bows are sturdy and tall, meant for long-range. “They wouldn’t even have to get close to take us apart.”

“If it rains . . .”

“We’ll climb out at the first sign.”

Reynaldo nods agreement.

They give Adán a head start. Like his older brother, he has spent days in the wilderness, and of all of them is most suited to scouting ahead in stealth. After Mara warns the rest of the group to silence, they set off after him.

They will travel down the fault line, then circle the base of the mountain until they reach the desert side. From there, Reynaldo will guide them through the warren of buttes and fissures that make up the scrub desert to the secret rebel camp. It’s a good plan, the best one they have. But Mara plods along by rote, putting one foot in front of the other in numb silence.

She and Reynaldo carry the tiny girl in shifts, and they’re about to do a handoff so Mara can navigate a boulder in their path when she hears something.

The cracking of a branch. The rustle of leaves. Coming from behind.

Mara shoves the tiny girl at Reynaldo, swings her bow around her shoulder, reaches back, and draws an arrow from her quiver.

The scuff of a boot. Definitely not a deer or a fox.

Mara notches her arrow. “Get behind me,” she whispers, fast and low. “Now!” The children scurry to obey.

She glares at the path they just traveled, trying to parse a face or figure among the dead windfalls and scattered boulders. A manzanita bush waves violently. Mara draws her bow until the fletching rests against her cheek.

A face materializes. Streaked with sweat and blood. Wild-eyed.

“Julio!” She may have screamed it. Mara drops her bow and sprints forward, reaching him just as he topples forward into her arms.

His sudden weight almost drives her to her knees, but she holds firm. His back is sticky and wet, his skin fevered. She drags him to level ground, then gently lays him down, instinctively stretching him out on his stomach.

Sure enough, the broken shaft of an arrow protrudes from his lower back. He gasps, his cheek grinding into the dirt, as she peels back his shirt to expose the wound.

The skin around it is swollen and oozing. The arrowhead is not deep, but it might be lodged in a rib. At least it missed his vital organs. They could have treated it easily two days ago. But infection has set in, and now streaks of sickly black zigzag across his skin.

“Oh, Julio.”

“Mara,” he whispers. “You shouldn’t have waited for me.”

If he is clearheaded enough to have made it to their cave, read the signs of recent occupation, and tracked them here, then there is hope for him yet.

Hope. Such a dangerous thing.

She traces his cheek with a forefinger. “I need to get this arrow out,” she says.

“I know.”

“I’ll have to scrape out the infection. It will hurt.”

“I know.”

The children crowd around. They stare at his oozing wound with a mix of delight and revulsion. “That’s gross,” says one boy, peering closer.

“I have duerma leaf in my satchel,” Mara says. “I can at least make sure you sleep before and after.”

Julio murmurs something that she takes to be assent. She bends over and plants a quick kiss on his hot forehead, then leaps to her feet. “Reynaldo, go find Adán. I’ll get a fire going to heat up my knife.”

“But the fire . . . the smoke . . .”

“We have to get that arrow out.”

Reynaldo frowns, then disappears down the ravine.

She floats through her preparations, a grin occasionally turning up the corners of her lips. Julio is alive. Alive, alive, alive. She steals glances at him as she rims a fire pit, gathers firewood, kindles a tiny spark into a bright flame.

Mara heats up the last of their water. She uses a cupful to make a tea of the duerma leaf, which Julio sips slowly from his awkward position on his stomach. She will need the remainder for cleaning the wound.

She doesn’t want to let the arrowhead fester inside Julio’s body a moment more, but she needs Adán and Reynaldo to hold him down while she works. So she sits by the fire, one hand trailing in Julio’s matted hair, the other holding her blade over the flames.

“My brother?” Julio mutters. “Is he . . .”

“Adán is safe. He’s scouting ahead. I sent someone to fetch him.”

Julio wilts against the ground, as if his body is finally able to let go an excess of air. “Thank you, Mara,” he breathes. “God, that’s a relief. And your pá? Did you find him?”

Mara can’t meet his eyes. “I found him.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

She pokes at a glowing branch with her knife, sending sparks flying. She whispers, “I found him alive.”

Julio says nothing. Mara feels his eyes on her as he waits patiently. He could draw secrets from a rock this way, by letting the empty silence stretch on until the rock has no choice but to fill it with words. It’s how he got Mara to tell him all the things her pá had done.

Mara doesn’t mind. Because Julio—unlike everyone else she has ever known—truly wants to listen.

“He tried to hurt me,” she says finally. “Even though I came back to help. He thought I was stealing. I think he was crazed from smoke, maybe from the duerma leaf I gave him. So I kicked at him to get away, and I . . . I think I killed him. Either way, I left him to die.” She turns a defiant gaze on him. “I know I should feel guilty. But I don’t. Not at all.”