As She Ascends

by Jodi Meadows

  Chills ran through me.

  I knew those words. I’d spoken them in Bopha two decans ago. But I’d refused to say what came next—that Bophans belonged on Bopha and Hartans belonged on Harta, and that a decree forcing the deportation of hundreds—thousands—of Hartans should be supported.

  Chenda had been imprisoned for refusing to encourage that doctrine. I’d been cut across the face.

  And here was Tirta, ready to tell a theater full of Hartans that their place was here—that they could not belong anywhere else. She would tell them that hundreds of Hartans living on Bopha would be sent here, ripped from the land where they’d built lives.

  Where did this end? The treaty said equality and freedom, but what if this was only the beginning of the other Isles chipping away at the promises they’d made?

  It wouldn’t be the first time our governments had betrayed the founding principles of the Mira Treaty.

  My heart beat with renewed rage.

  Seven hundred noorestones pulsed in response.

  Tirta paused in the middle of her line—“We must show our gratitude by staying loyal to our gods, and to our islands.”—and looked around.

  “I told you”—the manager grabbed my arm, her sharp nails scratching me—“you need to leave.”

  Hristo shoved the manager backward. “Don’t touch her!” His voice was deep and dangerous.

  Below, Tirta was still going: “To that end, it is my belief that Bophans belong on Bopha, Hartans belong on Harta—”

  Noorestones pulsed again, faster. How dare Tirta speak those words?

  “What are you?” The manager’s face went ashen.

  It happened too quickly: she tried to grab me; Hristo tried to intervene; their combined momentum caused me to stumble backward—over the ledge of noorestones.

  I fell.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  FALLING FELT LIKE FLYING.

  I tumbled through the empty expanse between the upper balcony and the main floor, with noorestone fire blazing into my body. Gasps, screams, cries for help: those were inconsequential sounds, buried beneath the heady rush of light and power.

  Echoes of misplaced memories cut through me like shrapnel. Something huge, something my soul yearned for but could no longer reach, called to me like a half-forgotten dream that beat with an inferno heart.

  I wanted it back. I wanted a thousand stars dripping between my fingers like burning jewels.

  Suddenly, I wasn’t falling.

  I landed on my feet, miraculously unhurt as I stepped off the theater seat hastily evacuated by a young man. He and the others nearby scrambled away, shielding their eyes as though they couldn’t bear to look at me.

  Maybe they couldn’t. When I lifted my gaze, hundreds of threads of cool, blue light bent toward me, surrounding me in a brilliant radiance that must have been terrifying. As though I were a great spider in the center of a web. Or a star with glorious rays of light, but these did not extend from me.

  No.

  They fed me.

  Never had I felt such strength, like noorestone fire flooded my veins and seared through every cell. Like I was vengeance and flame incarnate.

  Someone was screaming—maybe lots of someones—but I turned my attention to the impostor and her maker. Everyone else was irrelevant.

  My steps were lightning strikes across the theater floor. I ripped chairs from my path with hardly a thought. The people—they just ran. And still, with every breath, with every beat of my inferno heart, more power poured into me. Every noorestone in the theater obeyed my fury.

  Tirta stood motionless on the stage, staring, even as Elbena grabbed her arm and shouted something lost in the chaos my descent had caused.

  I kept going.

  Seven steps.

  Eight.

  Nine.

  Ten.

  I was patient. Deliberate. Because behind me, twin tracks of molten marble shone deep and angry red where my wings dragged. The acrid reek of melting stone lifted like a threat.

  Fourteen.

  Fifteen.

  Sixteen.

  On the stage, Tirta turned and fled with Elbena, moving swiftly toward the curtains as though they could escape.

  No. There was no escape. Enraged, I scooped silken ripples of illumination and hurled them at her.

  Flame exploded onto the curtains, burning the heavy fabric within seconds. But Tirta and Elbena were gone. I dropped back my head and roared, fury swelling through me. Fire flickered over my skin like scales. My wings extended, setting pieces of the theater ablaze.

  I was a dragon and I would burn her.

  I would burn every one of my enemies.

  Outshine stars.

  Swallow galaxies.

  I became infinite.

  And then—

  I staggered, suddenly heavy. Suddenly weighed down by the light of hundreds of noorestones and the things I had just done. I’d tried to kill someone.

  This wasn’t me.

  “Stop,” I whispered, but the light would not listen. I’d taken so much, pulling in more and more, believing my appetite was insatiable, and now it controlled me.

  The rush of power, which had felt so good before, suddenly made me sick. It felt greedy. Gluttonous. My body begged for relief, and I dropped to my knees, struggling to breathe. But it wouldn’t stop. Wouldn’t relent. I bent over, fingernails digging at the polished floor, and gagged.

  This wasn’t the same as overeating, though. This was bigger. This was raw energy pouring into me, filling me so full I would burst if I couldn’t stop it. Already I could feel it splitting the very seams of my soul.

  I wouldn’t be able to contain it.

  Even when I shut my eyes, intense light squeezed in—too bright.

  My skin itched as the light began to shred it apart. Everything inside me was burning up: my tongue, my eyes, my spirit.

  Seven hundred noorestones.

  Seven hundred.

  It was too much too fast too soon.

  A scream tore from my throat, and in the farthest reaches of my mind, I recalled the Pit after I’d channeled the power of just thirty-four noorestones:

  1.A valley of black ash around me.

  2.Cell doors flung wide and broken.

  3.Powdered noorestone dust floating through the cellblock.

  If I couldn’t bite this down—if I couldn’t stop the fire rushing into me—this would be nothing like the Pit. It would be worse. Complete devastation. A crater where the theater used to be. Maybe the whole block.

  Maybe the whole city.

  Screams built on screams. Thunder shook the building—or I did—and the evacuation became a stampede. There was no way to get more than seven thousand people safely out of the theater. Not quickly. I had to contain it or they’d all die.

  “Give me peace,” I prayed. “Give me grace.”

  The power ebbed.

  “Give me peace.” I thought the words would have come as a choked sob, but they were bigger. Louder. Deadlier. “Give me grace.”

  Darina and Damyan were so far away, though. Could they help with such a vast distance between us?

  “Give me peace.” My voice was a cataclysm, full and huge and heavy. “Give me grace.”

  My body was ready to burst, but the flow of energy was easing.

  “Give me peace,” I whispered, if I could even whisper anymore. The theater shuddered in response. “Give me grace.”

  The world was crumbling apart and I was the hand crushing it.

  But the noorestones no longer fed me. The tethers of light were motionless. Waiting.

  I breathed. One. Two. Three. Four.

  Maybe it was over. Maybe I was safe.

  Maybe everyone was safe.

  Hristo was back there, up the stairs, in the lighting room. Was he safe? What had he seen me do? What had I looked like to him?

  Just as I pulled myself up to my feet, everything reversed: like blood siphoned from a cut, the energy flew out of me, through the tethers connec
ting me to the noorestones. Draining. Empty. Destroying.

  I dropped to the floor again, screaming as it was all sucked out—or I pushed it out. I couldn’t tell anymore. This wasn’t me; it was the magic.

  ::Give me peace.:: I pounded the prayer against the floor.

  Darkness blanketed the theater.

  ::Give me grace.:: My plea was thunder.

  Quiet followed.

  ::Give me enough love in my heart.::

  A cool breeze touched my face, followed by someone else’s quiet code: ::Cela, cela.::

  I opened my eyes to find Aaru kneeling before me, worry written across his face. His mouth made the shape of my name, curled at the end with a question.

  “I fell.” The words stuttered out as I gazed around the theater. It wasn’t all dark or all quiet. Just hushed. Dim. The tethers of light still strung me to the noorestones, but rather than expelling all the energy at once, the flow was a trickle.

  Aaru helped me sit, and then he cupped my face between his hands. When our eyes met, his were dark and deep and filled with sadness. His fingers curled against my cheeks. ::Are you hurt?::

  “No.” My whole body began to tremble. “I thought I was going to hurt everyone else.”

  ::But you didn’t.::

  “Because you stopped it.”

  He shook his head. ::You stopped it.::

  I wanted to slump to the floor and rest, now that the magic was moving back to the noorestones, but I didn’t dare. If I closed my eyes, I would sleep for a decan. “Where’s Hristo? Is he safe?”

  Aaru nodded.

  “Did the others come with you?”

  ::No.:: We sat together for one hundred heartbeats. Two hundred. Then, the quiet began to ease and the light returned, and finally I realized that everything was back to normal. I was a girl again. No scales. No wings. No fanciful delusions that I was something more.

  Just a girl.

  Aaru’s fingertips slid down my neck and shoulders and arms until he took my hands. He stood, then drew me up with him. ::Let’s go.::

  PART THREE

  FOLLOW THE LIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  AARU, HRISTO, AND I FLED THE THEATER WITH THE last of the evacuees.

  We just blended in, rushing along with the rest of the people trying to escape my fury, and they had no idea I was the one who’d almost destroyed them, because they hadn’t been able to see through the corona of light surrounding me. And when I stumbled, someone took my arm and kept me on my feet. Another person asked if we needed help.

  Guilt turned over in me as Hristo and Aaru guided me through the stormy streets. We had to keep to the edges of the crowd to avoid the police pulling people aside for questions, but there were so many others doing the same thing; no one noticed us. When we reached the Red Wine Inn, I went straight to the washroom and shut the door behind me.

  Thunder growled and shook the building.

  In the other room, I could hear Hristo as he told the others about Tirta, our attempt to see her, and how I ended up on the main floor and wreathed in fire.

  Rain beat against the building, loud enough to drown his words and confuse my mind with irrelevant numbers, but as I sat in the far corner of the washroom floor, I could still hear everything.

  “I thought she was going to die,” he said. “Falling like that. I thought I was about to see her neck break and that would be the end.”

  “The end of what?” Gerel’s voice darkened.

  “The end of everything.” Hristo sighed. “She was already glowing when she fell. The noorestone magic was already in her. That’s probably why she landed on her feet. That power is what saved her. But then it kept growing until she was too bright to look at. Still, I swear, I saw—”

  “What?” That was Chenda.

  “Wings?”

  Easily, I could imagine Hristo closing his eyes as he tried to sort out the real from the imaginary. As he fought to recall each detail and judge it for accuracy.

  “It looked like she had wings made of light,” he said. “The floor turned liquid behind her.”

  “Seven gods.”

  “What do we do?” Ilina asked. “Can we help her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What if she gets worse?”

  “Remember in the Pit.”

  “I thought she was going to die in the Pit.”

  “Me too.”

  “And then the tunnel.”

  “That was too close.”

  “And it was nothing compared to this.”

  “She should never have rushed in there.”

  “What’s done is done.”

  “It was impulsive. Dangerous. What if she’d been caught?”

  Quiet.

  “This was a mistake. All of this.”

  “Chenda—”

  “No. Listen. This mess could have been avoided if you’d listened to me from the start. . . .”

  My heart squeezed as the argument escalated, and after a while I didn’t even pay attention to who said what. I just pulled my knees to my chest, shivering in my wet clothes, listening to my friends worry about me, about this power, and whether I would accidentally use it to destroy us all.

  “Give me peace,” I whispered. “Give me grace.”

  But if Damyan or Darina heard, they refused to give me either.

  A MINUTE OR an hour later, the door creaked open and silence walked in.

  He’d changed into dry clothes, and he carried a second pile, which he placed on the counter, and then he stood there. Watching me.

  I tucked my face back into the space between my knees and my chest.

  Without a sound, he picked up a towel and draped it over my shoulders. ::Dry.::

  How could I move, though? How could I do anything but curl myself into a tight ball of misery? I’d endangered my friends so many times. They’d lost so much because of me. And now they were afraid of me.

  They had every right, too. I’d thought I controlled this power, once it had bent to my will in the tunnel, but when I’d tried to push the overwhelming power away from me—back into the noorestones where it belonged—that had almost caused even more damage.

  ::You must dry.::

  I didn’t want to move. Even breathing took effort, and the beat of my heart. But if I just sat here, limp and useless, I’d become even more of a burden to my friends.

  My limbs felt awkward and heavy, weighed down by water and guilt, but after a moment of fumbling I managed to draw the towel around me and scrub my face, one slow push and pull at a time.

  It was too much. I tried to slump over again, but Aaru pressed the towel into my hands again. ::You must.::

  I couldn’t.

  ::They don’t mean to hurt you.::

  I dropped my face into the towel to hide a sob. How could I make him understand that they weren’t hurting me? Their words of caution and fear didn’t hurt me. They weren’t betraying me. No, it was I who would betray them.

  With my power.

  With my name.

  With my quest.

  I was the problem and I was dragging all of them with me, hurting each of them in terrible ways. Even my dragon hadn’t escaped the pain I caused.

  But I couldn’t scrape up the energy to speak aloud, or the coordination to use the quiet code, and now Aaru would go on believing my hurt feelings were the cause of this inability to even dry off.

  He sighed and pried the towel from my fingers. Carefully, he used it to squeeze water out of my braids, then patted the cloth down my back and arms and feet—wherever he could reach. Then he took the folded clothes off the counter and offered them to me. ::Need to change.::

  I didn’t want to. I didn’t even want to lift my head. But I couldn’t take the risk of him deciding to change my clothes for me. He’d be so embarrassed. Maybe I would be, too, with my skin all prickled with the damp and cold.

  So I pulled myself up, bones creaking as I moved, and peeled off my shirt.

  Aaru averted his gaze, even
as he pulled my towel around to make sure I dried my skin.

  My movements were sluggish, but after a moment I managed to pat myself dry, then pull on the fresh shirt he’d brought. We repeated the process with trousers, and he moved away only when I was fully dressed. The wet clothes went into the tub. The towel went over the rim. And he sat next to me.

  ::Do you want to go out there?::

  I shook my head.

  ::Why?::

  How could I explain what I’d become?

  He took my hands between his, letting the heat of his body move into mine. Then, he squeezed and tapped on my knuckles. ::Heard your conversation with Ilina on the ship.::

  I looked at him.

  ::When she told you stumbling means you aren’t standing still.:: He glanced toward the door, thoughtfulness written across his face. ::This was a stumble, but you will move forward again.::

  This had been a big stumble, and over something I’d thought was mine to control.

  ::The Book of Silence says progress is a labyrinth. There are obstacles, turns, and sometimes it seems you move opposite the direction you want to go. But the path always takes you home in the end.:: He squeezed my hands. ::Will go to Damina with you.::

  My heart caught.

  Our eyes met.

  “Why?” My voice cracked with chill.

  One. Two. Three. I counted breaths of waiting between us. While he looked at me. While I looked at him. While his heavy eyebrows moved inward. ::If you don’t want me to go—::

  I leaned toward him. “I want you to come with me.” I hadn’t meant for my question to sound like anything else. “Why did you change your mind?”

  He dropped his gaze to our clasped hands, and for an instant I hoped that meant he wanted to be with me more than he wanted to leave. But that was not our story. That wasn’t the way things worked between us.

  ::I still want to go home. I need to help family. But I need to help you, too.::