by Shannon Hale
She jerked the thing free from his tunic. The oiled cloth wrapped around it was blackened and warm, and it smelled greasy and dirty like a garbage fire. Her throat constricted against a sob, and her fist tightened around the cloth. The parchment inside crackled a little, the noise of a secret.
None of it made sense, why he would burn his sister, and suddenly hate the city dwellers, and just as suddenly join with the king to fight Tira. And then to burn with such abandon, even to his death. The cloth trembled in her hand. Would it explain why Leifer had changed? Whatever intelligence was inside had helped turn back the invaders today, but did it also demand the wielder’s life? Did Leifer really have to die?
Enna peeled back the cloth. The vellum was white as bone, rolled tightly, and tied with a string. She lifted it out carefully, but the string had burned, and it dropped away in pieces. The vellum unrolled before her eyes.
She jerked back, afraid to have such a thing open to her. Then she took a breath and nodded to herself. She had to know what had happened to Leifer, why he had ended this way. She read carefully at first, trying to make out the many unfamiliar words and understand the tight, sloping script and bleeding ink. Then she read fast, too fast to understand it all at once.
I, a woman of the River, keep brief record of the greatest power our people have seen—how to shape fire from the heat of the living, how to pull heat from the air and give it life inside fuel. How to hear the heat, how to bring it inside myself, form it into flame, and set it free . . .
Enna closed her eyes, and she could see the black ink strokes of the text flaming orange against her lids, as though the letters were branded behind her eyes. The idea of the knowledge burned impatiently against the strikes of raindrops on her neck and hands. She opened her eyes and the world seemed different, the colors brighter, everything pulsing with heat and life.
“Fire,” she said.
The tip of her tongue warmed. Beside her, a stalk of downed wheat smoked in the rain.
Part Two
Warrior
Chapter 6
That night the rain stopped suddenly, leaving behind low, sluggish clouds to mix with the smoke. After the sun fell, the sky was black.
Enna sat on the ground beside Leifer’s body far into the evening. Men patrolled the field, searching for wounded to take to nearby Ostekin. They glanced at Leifer’s scorched remains and quickly passed on. Enna wrapped the vellum back in its cloth and slipped it inside her tunic. Her thoughts hunted after the words she had read, sought to catch them, cut them open, and understand.
Every living thing gives off heat, the vellum had said. That is the key. I believe I was born with the ability to be a fire-speaker, though I did not know it until I was taught to feel that heat. Now it is so real, I wonder if I can see the pale yellow heat that trails from animals, people, plants, I wonder if I can hear the heat find me, tap against my skin, beg to be made into fire. Before it is pulled apart in the cruel, cold air, heat remembers that it was once a part of something living, and it seeks to be so again.
After nightfall, men began to place the bodies of the slain into piles. Dumbly, Enna still sat on the ground and watched, her hand on Leifer’s chest. When men tried to take Leifer, Enna roused.
“He’s my brother,” she said. “I will.”
She grabbed his ankles and dragged him to the nearest heap of corpses. He was so blackened, Enna was afraid at first that he might break apart like a burned-out log and collapse into ash. But he was still strong.
“Enna.” Isi stood by, her face barely recognizable in the night. “Leifer should be buried in honor. He was a hero today.”
Behind her, Geric and three captains lifted the king’s body into the back of the wagon, to be taken to the royal tombs in the capital. She could hear Isi’s uneven breath, torn from sobbing for the king and the day. Enna felt the vellum scratch under her tunic, and she put a self-conscious hand to her chest. Standing before Isi, the words of the vellum churning in her mind, reminded her she had acted rashly. Perhaps Isi would not approve. Now was not the time to tell her. She looked at her brother’s body sprawled on the ground.
“Leifer wouldn’t want to be in cold earth,” said Enna. “He should be burned.”
Isi squeezed her shoulder and returned to Geric.
Once you are aware of the heat loose in the air, the vellum had said, it becomes aware of you. Take it, form it into flame, send the flame into something dead so that it, too, can live again. Trees grow in the heat of life. Deadwood remembers that life. Make heat flame, send it into the deadwood, let what once was tree live again as fire.
Men in a wagon brought wood from Ostekin. Everything under the sky was soaked and miserable. They stacked the wood around the mound of bodies and, hunching over flint and kindling, began to try to coax a flame.
Enna closed her eyes. The air was damp and clung to her lungs as she drew it in. On the skin of her face and hands, she thought she felt the air a little heavier, a little more profound. A little warmer. Focusing on the touch of that air, she followed it back to its source—the men. She opened her eyes. Yes, there, she had known the men were there by the heat that had left them, slithered through the air, and found her skin. The more she focused on the heat, the more sensitive her skin was to its touch. And the strands of heat that found her stayed near.
To make heat into fire, you must draw it inside you. I was never aware of that small, hollow place inside my chest until I was taught to feel it, expand it, fill it with heat. If you are one who might have the ability, you can feel that place, too. Gather the heat touching your skin, then draw it in. Inside a living person, heat can become flame. Do not let it stay and burn you. Send it out into something dead, and the heat becomes live fire.
Enna felt the warmth on her skin and listened to all around her. She heard a man curse. The rustling of shaved wood. The snap of rubbing flint. A hiss, a flash, a sigh. She could almost feel the first word of fire sitting inside her, behind her eyes, on her tongue, while the man struggled to ignite even a tiny flame. She knew she could help the men light their fires, she could bestow all the dead piled there with the brief life of fire. This last gift for Leifer. The heat near her began to move as if in anticipation.
“Just this once,” she whispered, “for Leifer.”
With a thought, she gathered in the heat she had been feeling, the lost heat from the frustrated men crouched over their kindling, the drifting heat from the wet, green grasses and the roots of wheat stalks. She was afraid the next part would prove too difficult, but as soon as she willed it to enter, the heat came into her, into a place in her chest. She felt the place expand. Her eyes lifted open with the rush of life and the sting of heat. Get it out, was the immediate need. Quickly, she sent the transformed heat tearing through the air and into the nearest fuel.
A little heap of wood shavings burst into flame. The soldier working at it wiped his brow, relieved. Others left their own piles and went to him, patting him on the back, saying, “Well done, you got it. Didn’t think we’d get anything going in this damp.”
Enna looked over all the stacked wood, at the clothes of the dead soldiers, at all the fuel that she could inject with heat and bring back into a brief, blazing life. But she did not have to look far for reasons not to. There on the mound, one arm flung over his face, lay Leifer.
Enna whispered, “That’s all, Leifer. I’ll never burn again.”
Soldiers gathered, lighting sticks in the fire Enna had begun, distributing the flames to the stacked wood around that mound and other mounds. The fires grew taller, and the men stepped back. No one wanted to smell the burning-meat odor of their dead. Someone started to sing, and the living men gathered in to one another and joined with dissonant voices. As the fire bit into the rough wood and ate up the clothing, it growled and crackled and breathed, so that Enna imagined it sang harmony to the men’s voices.
“Up, up, up with your glass,” they sang, “the man has fallen down. Lift up, up, up your last glass, lift
up for the downed, downed man.”
It was a rough tavern song, but one they all knew. Enna liked it more the more they sang. The rhythm clipped, the words rolled over each sound, and some men pumped their arms as though they toasted the dead. It reminded her that there was still living to be done.
She watched the flames, but her focus slipped past them to the dead bodies, an arm tucked there, a face blackened in smoke, a tunic eaten through. The last of Leifer in this world, made brilliantly hot and bright and alive. She walked away before the fire burned out, before all that was left was ash.
Two weeks after the battle of Ostekin Fields, Enna walked back to the Forest. She felt uneasy, as though Leifer were at home waiting for her, hungry, unable to make a stew without her help. She knew it was not true, but she told Isi, “I just have to go see that he’s not there, and make sure the chickens are all right.”
She traveled in the company of a dozen Forest boys, most of whom were needed more at home than on the battlefront and some of whom now stared about with wide eyes and wizened brows, unready as they were to have seen what a war really was. Enna had thought Finn would be one of the returning, but he surprised her.
“Send a message to my ma, if you can—I’m staying with the prince,” and he walked swiftly back to his hundred-band camp.
Enna thought how Finn was changing, how everything was.
Faintly, she could feel the heat of her traveling companions as they walked beside her and the living plants beneath her feet. A few days into the journey, her sense of their heat was unmistakable. At night she felt uncomfortable around the fires, instead sleeping several paces beyond the others on the edge of the firelight. Even from there, she could sense its delicate heat weave through air to touch her skin.
When they passed under the Forest canopy, she was surprised by how thick the air was with the warm emanations of plants and animals. Enna had never realized before just how much was growing around her, how much life filled up every inch. She entered her empty little house, sat on her cot, and stared at the wood grain of the floor. She refused to look at the door, fighting a ridiculous hope that any moment her brother could come through it. Her old restlessness was so profound now that it was almost audible, a discontented buzzing that could compete with the crickets.
Enna spent much of that night with open eyes, wondering how Leifer had slept so soundly. How could he not lie awake, constantly marveling at the ribbons of heat that seeped out of trees and animals and through the cracks in the walls? Her awareness of it felt like a last link to Leifer. As she paid closer attention, her sense of the heat became more distinct. She thought she could tell the difference between heat from an animal, a tree, a fern. Everywhere, things were alive, awake, and growing. The heat tickled her skin and felt as pleasant as baking bread smells.
The hearth was cold. She stubbornly refused to light a fire, even with flint.
In the morning she shut the house up tight and made Doda a present of half of her egg layers in exchange for looking after the hens and the goat indefinitely. By the next week’s end, Enna was back in Ostekin. She greeted the west gate sentries and headed to the councilman’s house where Geric had set up headquarters.
Up the main road a bit, she thought she saw Isi dressed plainly with her hair in a scarf as though out for a walk. Two young soldiers, clearly agitated about something, stopped her and began speaking with energy. Enna picked up her pace.
“I’m sorry, I don’t think that’s a very fair request,” Enna heard Isi say. “You should speak to your captain. . . .”
“No, I’m telling you,” one of the soldiers said. “My brother died out on that field, and I’m not going to just sit here and wait until my captain says I can fight again.”
“That’s right.” The other soldier stepped in closer, pointing his finger at Isi. “And if you don’t . . . ”
“What do you mean, threatening the yellow lady?” Enna reached the group and stepped between Isi and the soldiers, shoving their chests until they backed up. “What, are you some Tiran pig dressed Bayern?”
The soldiers stiffened. “We’re just saying what’s true.”
“Oh, you’re just humming to hear the pretty noise. Get out of here, go on. If I hear you disrespecting our princess again, I’ll whip your hide so you’d think I was your own ma.”
The soldiers hesitated.
“Did you hear me, little boys?” said Enna. “Go on!”
They turned and walked swiftly away.
Isi sighed. “Those poor boys are grieving and don’t know what to do about it.”
“I do. Give the word and I’ll flog them for you.”
Isi laughed briefly and bowed her head. “I know you will, but I don’t think it’ll be necessary. This time.” She met her eyes. “You make me feel safe, Enna. I’m so glad you’re back.”
Enna inhaled against an uncomfortable feeling, as though she had dreamed she had hurt Isi and was only now remembering. The fire. I haven’t told her. She realized now that part of the reason she left Ostekin so soon after the battle was to avoid telling her friend that she had read the vellum. She did not want Isi to look at her as Enna had looked at Leifer, wondering how much of what he did was really Leifer, how much was fire, and always feeling on edge, waiting for him to break and flames to rise. You make me feel safe, Isi had said. How could Enna betray that?
“What’s wrong?” asked Isi.
“I, nothing. I’m glad I’m back, too. How can I help you, Isi? I’d like to be useful, if I can.”
“You’re still my maiden.”
“Yes, that’s something,” said Enna. “Well then, I’ll be the most valiant queen’s maiden in Bayern history.”
Isi shook her head. “Queen. For my first sixteen years, my mother was the queen, and when I came to Bayern there had been no queen for a decade. Now suddenly I’m the queen. I’m still not used to it.”
“I don’t think most people are. Just now when I arrived, I said to the sentries, ‘Where’s the princess, or the queen, rather?’ and they said, ‘You mean the yellow lady?’”
“I’m not surprised.” Isi patted the scarf that hid her hair. “I know I stand out too much with my hair so long and yellow as well, but I just can’t bring myself to cut it.”
“Cut it?” said Enna. “No, you can’t. It’s part of who you are.”
Isi smiled and entered the councilman’s house, but Enna paused at the door. She turned to face southeast, the direction of the kingdom of Tira and the direction of Eylbold, the closest Bayern town Tira had taken. She felt the hairs on her arms rise. They were so close. So close that she imagined she could close her eyes and feel her way southeast just by the heat of their bodies. The feeling twisted her stomach.
Enna turned her back on the south and followed Isi inside to prepare for a war council, one of many that autumn. The leaves turned and pinecones fell, and there were councils and meetings and strategies, unexpected clashes with Tiran troops and dozens of Tiran prisoners. And then the weather turned decisively toward winter. The skirmishes between Bayern and Tira slowed and then stopped like tree sap in the cold. Tira had taken two more border towns but had launched no great battles, and now both sides seemed content to wait out the winter and strike again in the thaw of spring.
And Enna grew restless.
One evening she sat in the main room of the councilman’s house, darning an apron to keep her hands busy. Isi was with Geric somewhere, and it had been a week since the queen’s maiden was needed for anything more than being a friend. She found herself staring southeast again, toward Eylbold. A mild winter storm pushed on the shutters, thrumming the wood against the house, noises that made Enna feel as though she were inside a drum. She pricked her finger with the needle and angrily sucked away the drop of blood.
“Lovely girls you have here.”
The careful, dry accent put ice in her stomach even before she knew who had spoken. Through the room three soldiers escorted a bound Tiran prisoner. He caught her eyes and sn
eered. “Glad to see there will be something lovely for Tira in this dismal country.”
A soldier shoved him roughly, and they left through the back of the house.
Enna sat glaring at the still swinging door, wishing she had had something burning and clever to say back. Her anger at the prisoner and her lack of response and her own uselessness lately while all of Tira sat snuggly on Bayern land heated her face and sped up her breath. The heat pouring from the hearth fire wrapped around her ankles and rose to her neck. The heat those soldiers had left behind shoved against her skin. It swathed her like hot hands over her face. The room seemed to dim, and she rubbed her eyes and wondered if she was seeing clearly.
Inside her chest, that place she had filled with heat the day Leifer died began to pulse expectantly, and Enna felt a pleasant, slippery desire to comply. Get rid of all the clinging heat, draw it tight into that space, and make just one tiny fire. . . .
Enna bolted upright, grabbed her cloak from its peg, and walked out of the house and into a cold burst of wind. Immediately the heat left her, and she sighed. So strong an impulse to make another fire had never taunted her before. She felt her limbs shiver, and she imagined it was not just the sudden cold.
The wind pushed against her back, so she walked with it, feeling its pressure move her toward the edge of camp. She felt better, but she did not want to go back into that house just yet to wait while loose scraps of heat from people and from fires stuck to her again.
Suddenly she remembered what Leifer had said when she had asked him if he could stop. You don’t understand if you ask me that question. I have to use it.
Had he tried to resist and discovered that eventually the fire would have its way? Enna felt her muscles tighten at the prospect of a challenge. She had not anticipated that the fire could be so forceful, but now that she knew, she was even more determined to overcome.
The town was mildly busy with the activity of an early winter evening. Every building was occupied with captains and ministers and blacksmiths and tanners. On both sides of the town wall, brown tents pooled in groups under individual hundred-band banners. There was no place for her to be alone.