Fierce Reads Page 4

  “What could you possibly like about a Valorian book?”

  “Valorians are interesting. They’re different.”

  “Indeed they are.” It stirred a dread in her, simply to see the printed language stamped on the pages. She had never been to Valoria, but everyone knew what people from that country were like: irreligious, brutish. Bloody-minded. Why, even the women took up arms. She could not imagine it. And there had been rumors …

  She set the book aside. “A story, then.”

  Arin was calm now. He lifted a hand to touch the back of hers in thanks, then curled his fingers into hers. She cherished that little warmth. It nested in her palm like a bird. “Tell me how the stars were made,” he said.

  “You are too young for that tale.”

  He pulled her hand from hers. “I’ve had eight name days.”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “I know the story already, Amma. I just want to hear it in your voice.” When she hesitated, he said, “Did you know that Valorians say the stars are sparks shot from the hooves of galloping war-horses?”

  The words made her heart race. Yet her country had no reason to fear Valoria. A mountain range stood between Herran and Valoria. The rest of Herran was surrounded by water, and the Herrani ruled the seas. We are safe, she thought.

  “I hear that Valorians eat gold,” the boy said.

  “No, of course not.” But did they? She wasn’t sure to what lengths their barbarism went. Eating gold seemed perfectly benign compared with the massacre in the southern isles. The Valorians had waded in blood, she’d heard. Those they didn’t kill, they enslaved.

  She wondered how much Arin knew about the wars beyond Herran’s borders.

  “Now, you will be quiet,” she said, “and you will listen. No interruptions.”

  He snuggled down, easy now. “All right.”

  “There was a young man, a goatherd, who lived in the mountains. His days were filled with bells and the scattering sound of goat hooves on loose rock. Nights were darker then than they are now—starless, lightless, save for the moon that hung like a jewel on the chilled black silk of the sky. He was alone. His heart was still. He remembered each god in his prayers.

  “He hadn’t always been alone. The days grew shorter, colder. Heavy gray clouds tore themselves into shreds on the mountaintops. Had he left behind the people he loved, or had they left him? No one knows. But he remembered them in the fading warmth of autumn. He heard voices ringing in the first frozen wind of winter. He told himself they were goats’ bells. Maybe they were.” She looked at her boy. He knew her weakness for storytelling. And it was, after all, only a story. Still, she wished he had chosen a happier one.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “He was poor. His shoes were thin. But he was hardier than he looked, and he had a gift. In the icy pink mornings, he would select a charred stick from the dead fire. He would go outside where the light was best. Sometimes he used the wall of his hut; he had no paper. Sometimes he used a flat stretch of rock in the cliff, letting its texture give dimension to his charcoal images. He drew. Fingers black, he sketched his memories, he shaded the lost faces, he rubbed a line with his smallest finger to soften what he had known.

  “The goats milled about him. There was no one to see what he drew.

  “But the snow saw. Winter’s first snow came. It lay a white palm on the charcoaled stone. It drifted over his hut. It eddied at the door as if curious, and wondering whether more drawings were hidden inside.

  “The goatherd’s skin prickled. Perhaps he should stay indoors.

  “He didn’t. He led the goats. He drew. And the snow came for him.

  “In those days, the gods walked among us. The goatherd knew her for what she was. How could he not? She was silver haired. Clear ice eyes. Faintly blue lips. The air around her seemed to chime. It was the god of snow.”

  Arin said, “You forgot something.”

  She hadn’t. Slowly, she said, “The god smiled, and showed her pointed, sharp, crystal teeth.”

  “I’m not scared,” said Arin.

  But how to tell her son the rest? The way the god silently followed the goatherd, so close that his shoulders grew frost? He drew for the snow god, whose frozen diamond tears fell at the sight of his images and rang against the rock. Every morning, he looked for her. He began to love the chattering of his teeth. When she appeared, the air sheered and sharpened. It became hard to breathe. Still, he longed for that painful purity.

  When she was not there, he remembered the goats. He probably smelled like them. Was warm and stupid, like them.

  Yet one day she touched him. It was a cold so cold it burned. It locked his jaw.

  She drew back, and tried again. This time, it was all soft hushes, the sort of snow that changes the world by claiming it. A pillowing snow. It feathered down. She layered herself on him.

  The burning cold came again. He begged for her bite.

  She left him. It was that or murder him, so he was alone again with his goats and his fire-black sticks and the smudged walls of his mountainside hovel.

  “They became friends,” the mother said finally.

  “Not friends.” Arin was reproachful.

  The boy read beyond his age, that much was clear. She frowned, but said only, “He didn’t see the god again. He saw what most mortals saw: snowflakes, brilliant in their white geometry. He watched the snow by day, he watched it by night … when he could. The moon was waning. Then came a night when it vanished altogether. The night was as black as snow is white. He could see nothing. I wish I could tell you, Arin, that he said his prayers as always, remembering each one, but that night he neglected the god of the moon.

  “He woke to the sound of footsteps crunching in the snow outside his hut. He knew it wasn’t his god—she moved hissingly, or was silent—but any stranger on this mountain was strange indeed, so he stepped through his door to see.

  “The newcomer was a man—or so it seemed. The goatherd wasn’t sure, suddenly, what he beheld, unless it was seeming itself. The visitor had black eyes—no, silver, no, yellow, or was that a glowering orange? Was he shrunken, or enormous—and wasn’t he, after all, a she?

  “The goatherd blinked, and although he didn’t recognize who stood before him, he at least understood what kind of visitor had come to call.

  “‘You want to be with my sister,’ said the god.

  “The young man flushed.

  “‘No, don’t be shy,’ said the god. ‘She wants what you want. And I can make it happen.’

  “The gods do not lie. But the goatherd shook his head. ‘Impossible.’

  “‘Mortal, what do you know? You’re too far from the realm of the gods down here. You need a bridge to go up into the sky. The air’s different there. You would be different up there. More like us. I can build that bridge for you. All you have to do is say yes.’

  “Wary, the goatherd said, ‘If I took that bridge, would it kill me? Would I live?’

  “The god grinned. ‘You’d live forever.’

  “The young man said yes. He would have said yes anyway, he would have chosen death and snow together, but he had been raised to know that you do not enter into an agreement with the gods without asking the right questions.

  “He should have asked more.

  “‘We’ll meet again tonight,’ the god said, ‘and build the bridge together.’

  “‘Tonight?’ It seemed terribly far away.

  “‘I work best at night.’

  “You must understand, it wasn’t that the young man was a fool. He had a lively mind, sensitive to details, and if the conversation had been about any other matter than his lost god, he would have been suspicious. But we don’t think too well when we want too much. He forgot that hole in the fabric of his prayers the night before. It didn’t occur to him that such a hole might widen, and stretch, and become large enough for him to fall through.

  “As agreed, he met the strange god that night. Although there was still no moon in
the sky, he had no trouble seeing. The god glowed.” In some versions of the tale, the god had the youth strip naked on the frozen mountain, coyly demanded one kiss, and was refused. “The god touched the young man’s brow. In that last moment, he suddenly understood that he had been bargaining with the moon. He saw that he had wrought his own doom. But there was nothing he could do.

  “He began to grow. His bones screamed. His joints popped. Muscle stretched and tore and disintegrated. He arched into the darkness. The mountains dwindled below. He left his flesh behind. It was as the moon god had promised: He was thrust up into the realm of the gods … but he himself was the bridge. He spanned the night sky.

  “It is true, for gods as well as mortals, that it is impossible to love a bridge. The snow god came, walked the length of him, and wept. Her tears fell and froze. They scattered the sky, piercingly bright. They fell in patterns, in the images he had drawn for her. That is why we see constellations. The stars show his memories, which became hers. We still see them when we look up into the night at a black bridge covered with snow.”

  Arin was quiet. His expression was unreadable. She wondered why he had asked for this tale. His eyes seemed older than he was, but his hand younger as he reached to touch her satin sleeve. He played with the fabric, watching it dimple and shine. She realized that she had, after all, forgotten the ball and the waiting carriage.

  It was time to leave. She kissed him.

  “Will Anireh marry the prince?” Arin asked.

  She thought that now she understood his interest in the story. “I don’t know.”

  “She’d go away and live with him.”

  “Yes. Arin, the sibling gods can be cruel to each other. Is that why you asked for the story of snow and her brother-sister moon? Anireh teases you. She can be thoughtless. But she loves you. She held you so dearly when you were a baby. Sometimes she refused to give you back to me.”

  His troubled gaze fell. Softly, he said, “I don’t want her to go.”

  She smoothed his hair off his brow and said gentle things, the right things, and would have left then to attend the royal ball with an easier heart, but he reached for her wrist. He held it, his hand a soft bracelet.

  “Amma … the goatherd wasn’t bad, was he?”

  “No.”

  “But he was punished.”

  Lightly, she said, “Well, all boys must remember their prayers, mustn’t they?”

  “What if I do, but offend a god another way?”

  “Children cannot offend the gods.”

  His eyes were so wide she could see the silvery rims of them clear round. He said, “I was born in death’s year, but I wasn’t given to him. What if he’s offended?”

  She suddenly realized the full scope of his fascination with the tale. “No, Arin. The rules are clear. I had the right to name you whenever I liked.”

  “What if I’m his no matter when you named me?”

  “What if you are, and it means that he holds you in his hand and would let no one harm you?”

  For a moment, he was silent. He muttered, “I’m afraid to die.”

  “You won’t.” She made her voice cheerful, brisk. Her son felt things too deeply, was tender to the core. It worried her. She shouldn’t have told that story. “Arin, don’t you want your secret?”

  He smiled a little. “Yes.”

  She had meant to tell him that the cook’s cat had had kittens. But something in his tentative smile caught at her heart, and she leaned to whisper in his ear. She said what no mother should say, yet it was the truth. Months later, when a Valorian dagger pressed into her throat, and there was a moment before the final push, she thought of it, and was glad she had spoken. “I love you best,” she said.

  She rested her hand on his warm forehead and said the blessing for dreams. She kissed him one more time, and went away.

  DYNAMITE JUNIOR

  Jennifer Mathieu

  BY JENNIFER MATHIEU

  The Truth About Alice

  Devoted

  Meet Jennifer Mathieu

  When people ask me how long I’ve been a writer, I always answer, “Since before I could write.” It’s not a joke. I used to dictate stories to my mother before I could put words on paper, and after she transcribed them, I would illustrate them. One of my favorite stories was about a sad, lonely cat who finally finds a tribe of friendly yellow felines.

  I majored in journalism because it seemed like a way I could write and still make a living—even though I did harbor fantasies of living in New York City and owning a claw-foot bathtub and writing fiction that was taken seriously by all the important critics. After I graduated, I worked as a reporter, but I didn’t have the taste for blood that journalism requires. I always felt like I was bothering people when I asked if I could interview them. But working as a journalist gave me many opportunities to observe how humans behave in all sorts of situations—critical stuff for a writer of fiction. So in the end, I’m glad it worked out the way it did.

  I became an English teacher in 2005, and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. In addition to falling in love with teaching, my students introduced me to a new generation of incredible writers of young adult literature, including E. Lockhart and Laurie Halse Anderson. I decided I would try and write for teenagers, too, and many years later I published my first novel for young adults, The Truth About Alice. It was one of the best moments of my life.

  The Truth About Alice tells the story of a girl named Alice Franklin who lives in a small Texas town called Healy. After rumors get started that she slept with two boys in one night at a party, she’s labeled a slut, but things go from bad to worse when she’s linked to the death of one of the boys she supposedly slept with—Healy’s football quarterback and hero, Brandon Fitzsimmons. Ostracized by the town and almost all of her classmates, Alice endures, eventually finding a friend in the form of a boy she’d never paid attention to before.

  The idea for this book came from my interest in small-town life and in telling a story with multiple, unreliable narrators, as well as from a Seventeen magazine article I read in high school. The article was about a teenage girl who’d been the victim of terrible, sexually explicit graffiti written about her in a bathroom stall at school. The school refused to clean it up and subtly suggested the girl was responsible for what happened. I was outraged. That piece became a seed for The Truth About Alice many years later. Just like the young woman in the article, Alice is also the victim of graffiti in a bathroom stall that the school chooses to ignore.

  My short story for this collection is told from the point of view of a tenth grader named Carmen, a new student, who has moved to Healy from Houston because of something traumatic that happens in her family. In my very early drafts of The Truth About Alice, Carmen was actually a major character, but I decided there were too many voices and I ended up cutting her—something that really saddened me even though I still feel it was the right decision for the novel. I’m thrilled to get to visit with her again. While her backstory is mostly as I’d originally planned, I’ve changed a few key elements. For example, in this story she’s new to Healy and no one knows about her past. While it’s connected to The Truth About Alice in that it’s set during the events of the novel, it makes sense as a stand-alone piece of fiction, too.

  If you’ve enjoyed The Truth About Alice, I hope this story adds an interesting layer to the world of Healy High, and if you haven’t read Alice, I hope it sparks an interest in checking out my first novel.

  Oh, and by the way, you might want to know that I did end up with that claw-foot tub after all, even if I live in Texas instead of New York City. But honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Thanks for reading!

  DYNAMITE JUNIOR

  by Jennifer Mathieu

  “Check it out,” says Sadie Salazar, “there’s new shit written in here.”

  I’m at the sink washing my hands, and Sadie’s voice echoes from inside the bathroom stall. When I hear it, I roll my eyes a little. I’ve o
nly known her for a few weeks, but this fake tough-girl Bronx-accent thing Sadie does is annoying. She was born in this tiny Texas town. She probably hasn’t even been to New Orleans, much less New York.

  “Let me see,” says Claudia Sanchez, because whatever Sadie tells her to do, she does. This bugs me as much as Sadie’s voice, but new friends who annoy me are better than no friends at all.

  I follow Claudia inside the stall. The black Sharpie marks look fresh and the words are printed in neat block letters, like whoever wrote it practiced beforehand.

  ALICE ALICE IS A WHORE

  DID IT WITH THE BOY NEXT DOOR

  DID IT WITH THE FOOTBALL TEAM

  ALICE ALICE BLOW JOB QUEEN

  “Jesus, those white girls are bitches,” says Claudia, like she’s bored more than surprised.

  “White girls started it but everybody’s writing in it,” says Sadie with a shrug. “And that girl is a slut.”

  Claudia nods in agreement. Of course.

  This Slut Stall was already a thing when I started tenth grade at Healy High in early October. The bathrooms at my old high school got tagged sometimes, but nothing like this. And the Slut Stall keeps getting worse, too. Back in Houston, they were super intense about cleaning up the graffiti because of gang members tagging everything, but here in Healy there are no gangs. No Galleria shopping mall or freeways either.

  There’s not much of anything, actually.

  “Who sleeps with two dudes in one night?” Sadie asks us, but she doesn’t expect an answer because we all know the answer. A slut. “We got, what, ten minutes till bio?” she continues. “I’m bored. I’m gonna add something.”

  “Me, too,” says Claudia. Of course.

  I stand there watching as Sadie fishes in her backpack for something to write with. The stale air around me smells like cheap cleanser and even cheaper perfume. I don’t want to stay in here a second more than I have to, but Sadie and Claudia are the only two girls that I really know at this school, and I have too much time to kill before my next class.