by Sara Holland
“Why?”
My voice comes out in a soft, pleading whisper. “Because she thinks that’s how she’ll get her power back.”
What little color was left in Amma’s face drains slowly away. Her eyes dart to the journal and back to me. The old tales and her friend before her. I know the pieces are starting to come together. “But the stories—”
“The stories say that the Alchemist tricked the Sorceress.” I hear Liam’s voice in my mind as I think of the two stories, the truth and the legend, entwining over the centuries. Where they differ, where they intersect. “He”—most people think the first Alchemist was a he—“offered her twelve stones, saying they were pieces of the heart he had stolen, and she rejected them.”
Amma nods along to the familiar tale. “And she forced him to eat them instead.” Her eyes are wide in the dark. She’s released her clenched fists, and drawn a little closer to me. For a moment, I can almost pretend we are children again, trading stories as we huddle close to a fire, desperate to ward off the chill and gloom of winter.
“The stones were the Sorceress’s heart—her life, Amma, her time.” I whisper now. “And when the Alchemist swallowed them, it all flowed back into him. But instead of living on like the Sorceress, the time was broken up into pieces. The Alchemist would live for a while, then die, then be born again.” I stumble a little over the words. It’s a story I still don’t remember living, though I feel the truth of it.
“Jules, you’re not making any sense.” Amma lets out a strangled laugh, and I can tell she’s trying for her usual briskness. “Stop this. You can eat and rest, and tell me when you’re feeling better what’s going on.”
“No, Amma, listen.” I reach out for her without thinking. She flinches—my heart twists—and I drop my hand to the journal, take the reassuring weight of it in my hand. I take strength from the soft, aged leather cover, the stories that overflow from the inside. I’ve leafed through it many times while walking through the woods. At moments, it’s been the only thing convincing me that I am not mad. “I am the Alchemist.”
Tears brim in Amma’s eyes and overflow down her cheeks. They catch the faint morning light and call up tears to my own eyes. “Why are you telling me this?” Amma whispers.
It’s the first question that I didn’t see coming, and it makes my breath catch. I realize I’m holding the journal over my chest like a shield. I put it down, and it falls open where a rough drawing has filled the page: a fox lashing out at a rearing snake, claws and teeth and fangs.
“Do you believe me?” I ask, my voice shaking. It’s not what I meant to say, but it’s what comes out.
Another long silence passes, and Amma takes the journal into her hands and opens the cover. “I never thought you were a murderer,” she says softly, her eyes flitting up to meet mine almost shyly. “I knew you had no love for her, but Roan . . .”
His name breaks the dam on my tears, and they spill out silently. Amma inhales sharply, and she lurches half a step to embrace me before pulling back.
“I didn’t want any of this to happen. I never wanted—”
My words are cut off in a gasp as Amma crosses the floor and wraps her arms around me. I think I might break apart—but from relief now, the first happiness I’ve felt in what seems like an eternity. I lean into her, and she hugs me tight, not seeming to care that I’m coated in forest grime. Her scent is familiar, the scent of home, and for a long moment I do nothing but breathe it in.
“You’re my best friend, Jules,” she murmurs. “Of course I believe you.”
At these words, my tears flow stronger than ever. They fill my eyes and run down my cheeks, cutting through days’ worth of dirt. “Thank you, Amma.”
Eventually she pulls back, her face thoughtful. “So Caro’s the fox, and you’re the snake?”
Her voice—patient but skeptical, like she’s questioning one of Alia’s wild stories—makes me choke out a laugh. “So it seems.”
“My Jules, the Alchemist of legend.” Amma’s face grows more serious. She lays the journal carefully on a crate and drops her hands to hold mine. “You’ll have to forgive me if I take some time to understand.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“Even when the messengers from Everless came with the news, I didn’t believe it.” She looks down, her eyes going sad. “That’s why she killed Roan? To break your heart, since . . . it was hers to begin with?”
I nod around the lump in my throat. “But it didn’t work.” Even though I feel broken, I’m still alive, and I cling to that like a lifeline. Amma’s hands are warm around mine. “Maybe I didn’t really love him. Or just . . . not enough.”
“It’s not your fault, Jules,” she says. “Perhaps your heart is stronger than you think.”
I shrug, though deep in my gut I know it’s not true. Even now I feel fragile, like a blow in the right place would shatter me utterly. Amma takes a step back—I feel a pang of loss as her hands leave mine—and guides me by the elbow to a bale of straw, making me sit. She plops down next to me and takes the journal into her lap. Slowly, she flips through the pages.
“It says here . . .” Her eyes flit to me, her brow creasing. “It says here . . . Fox will hunt Snake, always and forever.”
“She always has.” I try to sound offhand, but inside, my stomach twists. “Eleven lives, and I think she’s killed me in all of them.”
Amma taps the page with her finger. “What are you going to do then?”
I can see the fear in her tight shoulders, but her voice is so matter-of-fact. It’s almost reassuring, like all I need to do is think things through, and I can survive this. “I’m on my way to Ambergris, the dock city,” I say hesitantly. “I’m leaving Sempera.” That’s why I needed to find you.
Amma’s lips tighten into a line. “Well, you know best, I suppose . . .” She sounds doubtful.
“You don’t agree?”
“It’s just . . .” She crosses her arms and uncrosses them again, a nervous habit that means she’s thinking. “No disrespect to your papa, but that’s what he did all these years, and it doesn’t seem to have worked.”
“I’ll come back soon.” I don’t know if it’s true, but I can’t bear the thought of the alternative. “When I’m strong enough to face her.”
“Seize the day, Jules, before it seizes you first.” Amma’s eyes are bright when she looks at me. I laugh; it’s one of her favorite expressions, though it has a dark significance. Live now to the fullest, because when you’re poor in Sempera, tomorrow may never come. “I suppose I’d better do my best to get you ready for that day. What do you need?”
I shake my head, thankful tears still in my eyes. She just gave me everything I needed and more, and I feel like her faith in me could fuel me all the way to Ambergris and onto Liam’s ship. But of course that’s not the case. “A little food, if you have some,” I say, smiling like a fool. “And maybe I could stay here today . . . ?”
“Of course,” Amma says, bending to gather the eggs. In the course of a few moments, she’s assumed the brisk efficiency that she’s always had, that’s allowed her to take care of her sister all alone. “The soldiers already came through this morning, so I’d think you could stay as long as you need.”
My chest aches with gratitude. “Thank you, Amma.”
“I’m due at the butcher’s in an hour, but I’ll be able to sneak out after the morning stampede at the market. I’ll come back with food as soon as I can. And maybe some soap and warm water, while I’m at it.” She grins at me. “You look like a forest fairy, with mud for clothes.”
The sound of my own laugh startles me. “Soap then, and I’ll do my best.”
Amma turns to look at me one last time before bustling out of the shed. Now that she’s started smiling, it’s like she can’t stop, the edges of her lips tugging ceaselessly up.
“I’ll be back before you know it.”
Despite the cramped shed and the company of the chickens, I sleep well throughou
t the day for the first time since I left Everless, made whole again by Amma’s presence and comforted by her talk. I don’t have nightmares of the Sorceress, a girl on a dark plain or running through the woods, chasing me or being chased by me. Instead, my dreams are filled with the more pleasant memories of Crofton: playing in pollen-soaked fields with Amma in the summers and sitting at the kitchen table with Papa, the proud smile that he doesn’t attempt to hide from me. In my dream, we are happy and content, warm, our little cottage redolent with the smoky smell of venison that I’ve brought home from a hunt, cooking over the fire.
Something is wrong though. Somewhere beyond the walls of our cottage, there is shouting, screaming. Papa tenses, the smile slipping from his pale face. The smell of smoke is too strong. There’s a strange, acrid edge to it.
When I wake up in the cramped dark of Amma’s shed, the smell is still there.
A feeling of unreality grips me as I sit up and look around. Amma’s chickens are squawking in panic. The far side of the shed is outlined in flickering orange light, glowing fingers of it reaching through the cracks in the planks. I scramble to my feet and snatch up my bag just as a broken line of fire reaches through and alights the hay scattered across the floor.
For a moment, I am seven years old again, seven and rooted to the ground as the forge at Everless burns down around me.
But this time, there is no Papa to protect me, to carry me away. There’s only me.
I don’t give myself time to think. Clutching my bag, I turn around and kick the wall behind me, once, twice, three times until the rotting wood gives way, then yank open the hen coop so the hens can scurry out behind me, vanishing into the woods.
But any worry over losing Amma’s chickens or burning down her shed vanishes as I turn around, following with my eyes the river of fire that has flowed into my hiding place.
Because Crofton is in flames.
2
Panic grips my heart. Smoke is everywhere.
In the near distance, fire blooms over the blunt edges of Crofton’s rooftops. I run across Amma’s grandfather’s fields toward the smoking heart of the town, heedless of how I stumble over the old, loose cobblestones and mounds of freshly tilled earth. I need to find Amma. A picture forms of the squat butcher’s shop where she separates meat from bone, the market stall where she and Alia spend their days.
All those people, all those flames, all that wood.
My lungs are raw, my limbs already aching, but I push on, leaping over the broken-down wall that separates Crofton proper from the outlying farms. I reach the main road, then race toward the huddle of buildings, vaguely noting the clusters of people flowing in the opposite direction. I could be recognized, but that seems like the least important thing in the world as I race into town. Orange light flickers across the sides of the pale houses, brilliant as earthbound lightning. Thick smoke blurs out the sky above.
Sorceress, help me find Amma, I think desperately, absurdly, a child’s panic seizing control of my limbs. But sorceress is not a blessing anymore. It’s a deadly curse.
Soon I’m forced to slow, heat searing my face, burning my eyes. All around me, the wooden buildings smoke. Down the road, the schoolhouse is already a heap of rubble. Smoldering debris clutters the streets, the remains of furniture and market stalls. I have to jump over burning pieces of this or that as I pick up a jog, looking around desperately for any sign of life. The road is narrow, the flames close, and my hair begins to curl with the heat. An odd smell hits my nose—I jerk my head up to see that only a few steps away, the timelender’s shop is ablaze. I swear I can hear blood-iron bubbling as it melts.
A memory hits me of a garden party at Everless, a lifetime ago. A fire in the middle of it, contained in a bronze holder but reaching outward, fed by blood-iron, by hours and days and years, so that the flames burned hot in winter. A new wave of panic crashes against my skin.
How long will this fire burn?
“Help!” I cry out, though I can’t see anyone who would hear me. “Amma!”
No human voice answers my shout, but the fire ripples suddenly, as if a breeze has swept through it, and sparks land on my sleeve. I yank my arm back—
And stop. There’s something strange about the fire, even stranger than if it were only feeding on blood-iron. The flames, twisting yellow and red, shrink and grow with a rhythm as steady as breathing—controlled, constant, alive.
A crash behind me tears me from my thoughts, and I spin around. A man’s just burst from a house some yards ahead. Sparks fly out the door behind him.
He sprints in my direction, the fire following him into the road, flowing from the building. It’s not spreading as fire should but flows in his footsteps like a living thing, licking at his heels, advancing down the street in small, wild leaps. As he nears, flames inches behind, I remember a pack of coyotes I saw once when I hunted in the woods—half a dozen of them chasing down a wounded deer, yipping and jumping with something like joy as they closed in.
“What are you doing? Run!” The man grabs my arm as he passes, pulling me down the road, back in the direction of Amma’s farm. The flames seem to fall back from the man when I’m beside him. I don’t let myself think about what that means.
“What happened?” I gasp as we run, my voice hoarse from smoke and terror.
“Tenburn—” the man shouts, but he’s cut short by a cough. With his other hand, he clutches something to his chest: a small copper statue of the Sorceress, meant to bring luck. He goes on. “Something unnatural; it won’t die. My wife ran for the Readeses’ farm, the creek—” He squeezes the statue in his hand, a silent plea for aid.
Unnatural, I think, and then: Caro. This is her doing. It must be.
The Sorceress statue in the man’s grip is unburned, perfect. Mocking me.
I grind my heel into the dirt, attempt to rip my arm from his hold. “Let me go, please, I have to go back. My friend—”
“Larys!” A woman jogs down the road toward us. Even with the dark smudges on her cheeks, I recognize her: Susana, the local farrier, who would often visit our cottage when she needed my father’s blacksmithing knowledge. At first, her fearful eyes are fixed on Larys—but then her gaze falls to me, and I watch her face stretch into a mask of horror. She halts and stares, like I myself am made of flame.
“Snake,” she spits. Her expression is unmistakable—hatred. The man, Larys, drops my elbow and jumps back, his arms wrapped protectively around himself. As if I might pounce and take a bite out of him, given the chance.
Before I can think, the woman’s in front of me, her hand closing like a vise over my arm. “My brother is dead because of you. His home collapsed on him. You’ve brought this on us,” she hisses, trembling in terror or rage. She glances rapidly left to right. Looking for someone else to tell. “Murderer.”
And she shoves me backward, into a bed of flames.
I fling my arms out, but there’s nothing to grab hold of. My ankle catches on what remains of a wall, and I fall back into fire. The pain is blinding, all-consuming—and then it’s gone.
When my vision clears of its red haze, I see that the flames have retreated and re-formed into a ring that encircles me where I’m sprawled in the wreckage of a building. I can feel the heat from the flames, but the coal under me is cool. Larys and Susana stand in the street, gaping at me.
“Help!” Susana shouts suddenly. “Soldiers!”
“No, please—” I start, but the words die in my throat. My vision blurs with tears, making me feel like I’m in one of my dreams. I imagine the people I grew up with seeing me and screaming, Snake, witch, liar, how dare you show your face here.
You know me, I want to scream. I’m just Jules Ember. Pehr’s daughter. This is my home.
But there is no just about me anymore. Caro’s stories have spread through Sempera like a cloud of poison. I am the demon in a girl’s body who murdered the Queen and Roan Gerling, enemy of the Sorceress, the crown of Sempera itself. I don’t understand what Car
o has wrought here, but I know that it is meant for me.
She will kill everyone in Sempera, if that’s what it takes to break me.
Amma. With the thought of her, it’s like the fire has jumped into my heart and ignited there.
I plant my hands in the coals and push to my feet, and Larys and Susana curse and turn tail like their worst nightmare is behind them. But I don’t care anymore. Just like the moment when I saw Roan fall into Papa’s hearth as a child, I don’t think. I can’t think. Something larger has taken hold of me, filling my chest, moving my limbs from the inside.
I turn and charge toward the flames, throwing myself deeper into Crofton as it burns.
Smoke coats my lungs like sand. My eyes burn with it, and it’s becoming hard to see. But on the street, fire parts and flows near my feet like river water around a stone. It doesn’t touch me as I pelt toward the center of town, toward the familiar narrow path that leads to Amma’s butcher’s shop. Maybe she ran out already and is safe outside the town, watching it crumble, fearing for me.
The creak and snap of burning wood fills the air around me. A clothesline on fire, its shirts and blankets transformed into blazing flags, falls in front of me, floating to the ground like leaves in autumn. Coughing and screaming Amma’s name, I turn onto the street where she spends so many of her days.
And stop short.
Most of the buildings have already been reduced to ashes. This must be where the fire started. And the street—Amma’s shop—is a smoking ruin, the tallest part of it rising just over the top of my head. The interior structure is exposed, the storage rooms open to the air, their jagged shapes shimmering faintly with embers.
A plume of smoke rises into the sky and, for a heartbeat, seems to take the shape of a slender girl. My delirious mind imposes features on the smoke: beautiful but with a sinister smile. Caro.
I hear her voice in my mind. I will break your heart, Jules.