Ice Country

  ICE COUNTRY

  A Dwellers Saga Sister Novel

  Book Two of the Country Saga

  David Estes

  Published by David Estes at Smashwords

  Copyright 2013 David Estes

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Discover other exciting titles by David Estes available through the author’s official website:

  http://davidestesbooks.blogspot.com

  or through select online retailers.

  Young-Adult Books by David Estes

  The Dwellers Saga:

  Book One—The Moon Dwellers

  Book Two—The Star Dwellers

  Book Three—The Sun Dwellers

  Book Four—The Earth Dwellers (Coming September 2013!)

  The Country Saga by David Estes (A sister series to The Dwellers Saga):

  Book One—Fire Country

  Book Two—Ice Country

  Book Three—Water & Storm Country (Coming June 7, 2013!)

  The Evolution Trilogy:

  Book One—Angel Evolution

  Book Two—Demon Evolution

  Book Three—Archangel Evolution

  Children’s Books by David Estes

  The Nikki Powergloves Adventures:

  Nikki Powergloves- A Hero is Born

  Nikki Powergloves and the Power Council

  Nikki Powergloves and the Power Trappers

  Nikki Powergloves and the Great Adventure

  Nikki Powergloves vs. the Power Outlaws (Coming in 2013!)

  This book is dedicated to my incredible team of beta readers.

  Your kindness, selflessness, and gently honest feedback

  has helped craft this series more than you may realize.

  Chapter One

  It all starts with a girl. Nay, more like a witch. An evil witch, disguised as a young seventeen-year-old princess, complete with a cute button nose, full red lips, long dark eyelashes, and deep, mesmerizing baby blues. Not a real, magic-wielding witch, but a witch just the same.

  Oh yah, and a really good throwing arm. “Get out!” she screams, flinging yet another ceramic vase in my general direction.

  I duck and it rebounds off the wall, not shattering until it hits the shiny marble floor. Thousands of vase-crumbles crunch under my feet as I scramble for the door. I fling it open and slip through, slamming it hard behind me. Just in time, too, as I hear the thud of something heavy on the other side. Evidently she’s taken to throwing something new, maybe boots or perhaps herself.

  Luckily, her father’s not home, or he’d probably be throwing things too. After all, he warned his daughter about Brown District boys.

  Taking a deep breath, I cringe as a spout of obscenities shrieks through the painted-red door and whirls around my head, stinging me in a dozen places. You’d think I was the one who ran around with a four-toed eighteen-year-old womanizer named LaRoy. (That’s LaRoy with a “La”, as he likes to say.) As it turns out, I think LaRoy has softer hands than she does.

  As I slink away from the witch’s upscale residence licking my wounds, I try to figure out where the chill I went wrong. Despite her constant insults, narrow-mindedness, and niggling reminders of how I am nothing more than a lazy, liquid-ice-drinking, no-good scoundrel, I think I managed to treat her pretty well. I was faithful, always there for her—not once was I employed while courting her—and known on occasion to show up at her door with gifts, like snowflake flowers or frosty delights from Gobbler’s Bakery down the road. She said the flowers made her feel inadequate, on account of them being too beautiful—as if there was such a thing—and the frosty’s, well, she said I gave them to her to make her fat.

  She was my first ever girlfriend from the White District. I should’ve listened to my best friend, Buff, when he said it would end in disaster.

  Now I wish I hadn’t wasted my gambling winnings on the likes of her.

  In fact, it was just yesterday morning when I last stopped by to deliver some sweet treats, only to hear the obvious sounds of giggling and flirting wafting through the red wood of her father’s elegant front door. Needless to say, I was on the wrong side of things, and much to my frustration the door was barred by something heavy.

  So I waited.

  And waited.

  After about three hours her father returned home, and soft-hands LaRoy emerged looking more pleased with himself than a young child taking its first step. In much less time than it took for the witch to put the smile on his face, I wiped it off, using a couple of handfuls of ever-present snow and my rougher-than-bark hands. I capped him off with matching black eyes and a slightly crooked, heavily bleeding nose. He screamed like a girl and ran away crying tears that froze on his cheeks well before they made it to his chin.

  Hence the big-time breakup today.

  Best of luck, witch, I hope crooked-nosed LaRoy makes you very happy.

  Why do I always pick the wrong kinds of girls? Answer: because the wrong kinds of girls usually pick me.

  Since my formal schooling ended when I was fourteen, I’ve had a total of three girlfriends, one each year. None ended well, as endings usually go.

  Walking down the snow-covered street, I mumble curses at the beautiful stone houses on either side. The White District, full of the best and the richest people in ice country. And the witch, too, of course, the latest girl to add to my so-not-worth-the-time-and-effort list.

  I pull my collar tight against the icy wind, and head for my other girlfriend’s place, Fro-Yo’s, a local pub with less atmosphere than booze, where a mug of liquid ice will cost you less than a minute’s pay and the rest of your day. Okay, the pub’s not really my girlfriend, but sometimes I wish it was. I’ve been drinking there since I turned sixteen and passed the “age of responsibility”.

  Although it’s barely midmorning, Fro’s is open and full of customers. But then again, the pub is always open and full of customers. We might not have jobs, but we’ll support Yo, the pub owner, just the same.

  Snow is piled up in drifts against the gray block-cut stone of the pubhouse, recently shoveled after last night’s dumping. Yo’s handiman, Grimes, is hunched against the wind with a shovel, clearing away the last of it along the side, leaving a slip-free path to the outhouse, which will be essential later on, when half the joint gets up at the same time to relieve themselves. There are two things that don’t mix: liquid ice and real ice. I’ve seen more broken bones and near broken necks than I’d like around this place.

  “Mornin’, Grimes,” I say as I pass.

  Grimes doesn’t look up, his matted gray hair a dangling mess of moisture and grease, but mumbles something that sounds a lot like, “Icin’ neverendin’ colder’n chill night storms…” I think there’s more but I stop listening when he starts swearing. I’ve had enough of that for one day. And yet, I push through the door of the obscenity capital of ice country.

  “Dazz! I was wondering when you’d freezin’ show up,” my best friend says when I enter. Following protocol, I stamp the snow off my boots on the mat that says Stamp Here, and tromp across the liquid-ice-stained floorboards. Buff kicks out a stool at the bar as I approach. He’s grinning like an icin’ fool.

  For a moment the place goes silent, as half the patrons stare at me, but as soon as they recognize me as one of the regulars, the dull drone of conversation continues, mixing with the clink of tin jugs and gulps of
amber liquid ice.

  “Get a ’quiddy for Dazz,” Buff shouts to Yo above the din. The grizzled pub owner and bartender sloshes the contents of a dirty, old pitcher into a tinny and slides it along the bar. Well-practiced bar sitters dodge the frothing jug as it skates to a stop directly in front of me. As always, Yo’s aim is perfect.

  “Thanks,” I shout. Yo nods his pockmarked forehead in my direction and strokes his gray-streaked brown beard thoughtfully, as if I’ve just said something filled with wisdom, before heading off to refill another customer’s jug. He doesn’t get many thanks around this place.

  “Out with it,” Buff says, slapping me on the shoulder. His sharp green eyes reflect even the miniscule shreds of daylight that manage to sneak through the dirt-smudged windows.

  “Out with what?”

  Shaking his head, he runs a hand through his dirty-blonde hair. “Uh, the big breakup with her highness, Queen Witch-Bitch herself. It’s all anyone’s been talking about all morning. Where’ve you been? I’ve been dying to get all the details.”

  Elbows on the bar, I lean my head against my fist. “It just happened! How the chill do you know already?”

  Buff laughs. “You know as well as anyone that word travels scary fast in this town.”

  I do. Normally, though, the gossip’s about me getting broken up with after having done something freeze-brained, not the other way around. “What are they saying?” I ask, taking a sip of ’quiddy and relishing the warmth in my throat and chest.

  Buff’s excitement seems to wane. He stares at his half-empty mug. “You don’t wanna know,” he says, and then finishes off the last half of his tinny in a series of throat-bobbing gulps.

  “Tell me,” I push.

  “Look, Dazz…” Buff lowers his voice, a deep rumble that only I can hear. “…the thing about girls is, when you want ’em they’re scarcer than a ray of sunshine in ice country, and when you don’t, they’re on you like a double-wide fleece blanket.” Now I’m the one looking at my unfinished drink, because, for once, one of Buff’s snowballs of wisdom is spot on. I thought I wanted the witch—because of her looks—but as soon as I got to know her I wanted to toss her out with the mud on my boots.

  Using my knuckles, I knock myself in the head three times, exactly like I rapped on the witch’s door this morning before it all went down. Don’t ask, don’t ask, don’t ask, I mentally command myself. “What are they saying?” I ask, repeating myself. Having not listened to my own internal advice, I feel like knocking my skull against the heavy, wooden bar a few dozen more times, but I manage to restrain myself as I wait for Buff’s response.

  “Well…some of them are saying good sticks for you, she got what she deserved, Brown District pride and all that bullshiver. You know the shiv I mean, right?”

  All too well. I nod. “And the others?”

  Buff chews on his lip, as if deciding how to break something to me lightly.

  “Give it to me straight,” I say.

  He sighs. “You know tomorrow they’ll move onto the next freezin’ bit of juicy gossip, right?”

  “Buff,” I say, a warning in my voice. I know what’s coming, so I tilt my tinny back, draining every last drop in a single burning gulp.

  “If I tell you, promise me you won’t start anything—I’m not in the mood.”

  Looking directly into his black pupils, I say, “I promise.”

  He rolls his eyes, knowing full well I just lied to him. Then he tells me anyway. “Coker’s been saying the witch was too good for you, that she shoulda dumped your Mountain-fearin’ arse a long time ag—”

  I’m on my feet and breaking my false promise before Buff can even finish telling me. My stool clatters to the floor, but I barely notice it. I get a bead on Coker, who’s between two of his stone cutting mates, laughing about something. Regardless of what it is, and even though they’ve probably moved on from discussing me and the witch already, I pretend it’s about me. About how I’m not good enough for someone in the White District. About how I’m lazy and good for nothing.

  My fists clench and my jaw hardens as heat rises in my chest. Always aware of what’s happening in his pub, Yo says, “Now, Dazz, don’t start nuthin’, remember the last time…”

  “Dazz, hold up,” Buff says, his feet scuffling along behind me.

  I ignore them both.

  When I reach Coker he’s already half-turned around, as if sensing me coming. I spin him the rest of the way and slam my fist right between his eyes. A two for one special, like down at the market. Two black eyes for the price of one. His head snaps back and thuds gruesomely off the bar, but, like any stonecutter, he’s tougher than dried goat meat, and rebounds with a heavy punch of his own, which glances off my shoulder, sending vibrations through my arm.

  And his friends aren’t gonna sit back and watch things unfold either; they jump on me in less time than it took for the White District witch to cheat on me, swinging fists of iron at my head. One catches my chin and the other my cheek. I jerk backwards, seeing red, blue, and yellow stars against a black backdrop, and feel my tailbone slam into something hard and flat. The wooden table collapses, sending splinters and legs in every direction—both table legs and people legs. I’m still not seeing much, other than stars, but based on the tangle of limbs I’d say the table I crashed into was occupied by at least three Icers, maybe four.

  I shake my head and furiously try to blink away the dark cloud obscuring my sight, feeling a dull ache spreading through the whole of my backside. When my vision returns, the first thing I see is Buff hammering rapid-fire rabbit punches into one of the stone cutter’s, sending him sprawling. The area’s clearing out, with patrons scampering for the door, which is a good thing, because Coker gets ahold of Buff and throws him into another table, which topples over and skids into the wall.

  Me and Buff spring to our feet simultaneously, cocking our fists side by side like we’ve done so many times growing up in the rugged Brown District. Buff takes Coker’s friend and I take Coker. We circle each other a few times and then all chill breaks loose, as the fists start flying. After taking a hit in the ribs, I land a solid blow to Coker’s jaw that has him reeling, off balance and stunned. I follow it up with a hook that sends a jolt of pain through my hand, which is likely not even a quarter of the pain that I just sent through his face. He drops faster than a morning turd in the outhouse.

  I whirl around to find Buff in a similar position, standing over his guy and shaking his hand like he’s just punched a wall. The guy he was fighting was so thick it probably was like hitting a wall. We stand over our fallen foes, grinning like the seventeen-year-old unemployed idiots that we are, enjoying the aliveness that always comes with winning a good, old-fashioned fair fight.

  Yo’s glaring at us, one hand on his hip and the other holding an empty pitcher. I shrug just as his eyes flick to the side, looking past us. The last thing I hear is a well-muffled scuff.

  Everything goes black when the wooden stool slams into the back of my head.

  Chapter Two

  I wake up to a slap in the face. Not a loving, caring slap when the doc smacks a newborn baby in the butt to get it to cry, but a stinging, full handed palm across the face that snaps my head to the side and will likely leave a fierce red handprint on my cheek. I’d be lying if I told you it didn’t conjure up memories of at least one ex-girlfriend.

  “Yow!” I yelp. “What the chill?”

  As I blink away the wave of dizziness that spins my vision in blurry swirls, I hear the sharp crack of palm flesh on cheek flesh. For a moment I’m left wondering whether it’s an echo from me getting slapped, but then I hear a similar outburst from someone close by.

  I close my eyes, fighting back the urge to vomit as the spinning room gradually slows. “Buff, is that you?” I slur.

  “Dazz?”

  “Yah.”

  “You breathin’?”

  “Nay,” I say.

  “What the freeze happened?” Buff asks.

  B
efore I can answer, a third voice chimes in. “You two and your icin’ prideful stupidity tore up my pub, is what happened,” Yo bellows. Yo. The slapper. I’ve never seen a day when his hands were clean. I’ll have to wash my face a half-dozen times…just as soon as I can figure out the difference between up and down.

  “Sorry, Yo,” Buff says diplomatically. “It won’t happen again.”

  “That’s two fights last week and three this ’un. Nay, it freezin’ won’t happen again, ’cause you ain’t welcome back.”

  My eyes snap open and I see three Yo’s standing over me, looking angrier than a skinned bear in a snowstorm. His thick mess of beard is right over my face and I clamp my mouth shut for fear of getting a hairy appetizer before lunch.

  “But, Yo, you can’t do that—we’ve always come here.” Buff’s words come out as a plea, which is exactly what it is. I expect if he was physically able to, he’d be on his knees with his hands clasped tight, praying to the Heart of the Mountain for Yo to reconsider.

  The red hot anger leeches from Yo’s face, leaving him paler than one of the Pasties from the Glass City out in fire country. “You think I don’t know that?” he says, dropping his voice to a whisper. “Chill, I practically raised you boys.” Wellll, I wouldn’t go that far. I respect Yo and how well he runs his business, but honestly, I’d rather be raised by wolves, and not the tame, gentle kind who pull our sleds; the sharp-fanged vicious ones who are known to drag children into the forest.

  But at the same time, there’s a degree of truth to his words. Most of what we’ve learned about life has come from our time spent in Fro-Yo’s. First, when we were just kids, brought by my father after school to “learn how to be men,” and then, after he caught the Cold and passed on, we kept going back. Yo could’ve turned us away, because we were too young without having a parent there, but he didn’t. Knowing full well from the gossip that my mother would probably never be motherly again, he served us wafers and goat’s cheese and gumberry juice, never charging us a thing. And we learned how to be men, or at least the ice-country-tavern version of men, drinking hard and fighting harder.