Ignite the Sun

by Hanna Howard

  I stared at her. “Milla?”

  “Milla?” Bronya repeated, looking blank. “Oh! No, no, not Milla. Oh dear, I thought you’d know by now—”

  A funny tingling swept through my chest. “Wait,” I interrupted. “Wait, you knew my mother? My actual mother?”

  The barn spun around me. It was one thing to imagine my long-dead queen of a mother as a character from a story, or to weave fantasies about what she might have been like, or how my childhood would have been different had she lived . . . But to think that someone still living might have known her? Forgetting my weariness, I sat up, breath short and fearing that Bronya might turn out to be a dream.

  Her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, sweetheart, you look so much like her. I thought at once it must be you—the kingdom’s been crawling with soldiers searching for you this last month, and anyone can see what you are—but goodness! You even look like Elysia—apart from the hair and the freckles. That’ll be the sun, of course.” She laughed, but there was a barely controlled sob in the sound. “I can still picture her face on the day you were born. Never in all her life did she imagine she’d bear a nymph child. You’d think she’d just given birth to the sun itself, the way she looked at you.”

  My thoughts were thick and ponderous, and I put a hand to my head to stop the spinning. I didn’t understand who this Bronya was, or how she knew these things, but I couldn’t mistake her sincerity. As her words sank into me, warm and rich as steamed milk, everything else faded to insignificance.

  My mother had loved me from the first moment she saw me.

  Not tolerated me. Not hoped I might advance her standing at court. Not set impossible standards by which I might hope to earn her approval.

  Loved me.

  My mother.

  Before I could stop them, tears were sliding hot and fast down my cheeks, and I bent forward to put my head into my lap. Bronya gave a choked “Oh!” and I felt her arms around my shoulders. She drew me against her as she plopped down on the hay and cried too, her sobs soft and gentle.

  “I’m sorry,” she sniffed after a few moments, releasing me so I could sit up again. “You must think I’m mad. Here I was going to be proper and controlled, and what do I do? Come in and start blubbering without so much as a how do you do!”

  I dragged a sleeve across my face, hiccupping slightly, and looked at her. Her eyes were a deep, soft brown, and there were laughter lines at the corners. Though I could still see unshed tears glinting above the lower lids, she had regained her smile.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again, her voice choked. “I don’t know what’s happened to you, but I can see you’ve been through a lot. Let me start over.” She took several deep breaths and sat back cross-legged, her plain muslin skirt spread neatly around her. “My name is Bronya Dell, and my husband Roark and I live and work on this farm. We found you badly injured at the edge of our land, and we’ve done our best to fix you up. So long as you don’t leave the barn, you’ll be safe until you recover. No one knows you’re here.”

  I nodded, repressing a smile at her sudden formality. There were a hundred questions I needed to ask—how long I’d been here, where we were, what the queen had been doing to find me—but the words that spilled out of me had nothing to do with any of that.

  “How did you know my mother?”

  Her posture melted slightly, and her hands twitched as if she wanted to pull me into another hug. Instead she clasped them in her aproned lap. “We were childhood friends,” she said, decorum gone in another rush of emotion. “Elysia was a commoner, you know. Daughter of a cobbler. And your father—oh, your father was so good to her. Theirs was a fairy tale sort of love story. The prince courted the cobbler’s daughter as if she were a duchess, and she may as well have been, as kind and good as she was. She was my dearest friend. I held you the day you were born, you know, Princess.”

  I was back to feeling lightheaded. “Siria,” I mumbled.

  “Siria,” she repeated, as though trying out the name. “Yes, that’s what the broadsheets call you, isn’t it?”

  “Shouldn’t they?” I said, trying not to look stunned at the idea of broadsheets with my name on them.

  She looked surprised. “Well, it’s not your real name, of course.”

  I blinked at her in shock. It made perfect sense that Phipps and Milla had been the ones to call me Siria, but somehow it had never occurred to me that my original mother and father might have given me a different name. Had Yarrow known? Bronya seemed to guess at some of my thoughts, because she gave a kind smile and put her palm against my cheek.

  “Helena. You are Princess Helena of Luminor.”

  For a few moments I sat with my eyes closed, pretending the hand against my cheek belonged to Elysia of Luminor, my mother, who had loved me from the first moment she saw me. Who had named me Helena. Who had been the daughter of a cobbler, and who my father, a prince, had treated like a duchess.

  I opened my eyes again, taking several shaky breaths. “How long have I been here?”

  “Four days,” Bronya said, folding her hands in her lap again. “You’ve been very ill.”

  “Four days? Has—has anyone come looking for me?”

  “No more than usual,” she said, sounding surprised. “Just the average patrol of soldiers. Princess, what are you doing?”

  I had clambered to my knees and was trying to disentangle myself from the blankets. “Call me Siria,” I said, pulling frantically at a quilt. “And I’m sorry, really I am, but I need to leave right away. My friends—I don’t know what happened to them. Yarrow cast some enchantment, and I ended up at the edge of your field, I guess . . . And if something’s happened to them . . .” I broke off, struggling to get a grip on myself. Tears were rising behind my eyes again, both at my sickening worry and at the idea of leaving this woman who had known my mother.

  “Yarrow?” she said, eyes widening. “Yarrow Ash?”

  I froze and stared at her. She looked odd—startled and sad and hopeful all at once.

  “You know Yarrow?”

  She nodded slowly. “I did . . . once. He didn’t approve of Roark and me leaving the resistance, and I haven’t seen him since. But at one time we were . . . good friends.”

  “The resistance?” I gasped, forgetting my haste in a new wave of shock. “You and Roark were part of the resistance group in the north?”

  “A long time ago. But . . . things happened, and we left, and . . . Well. Never mind that. How do you know Yarrow?”

  “He as good as raised me,” I said, my chest aching. I wanted to stay here with Bronya and hear about why she and Roark had left the rebels, how she knew Yarrow, what my mother had been like . . . but I knew I would never forgive myself if Yarrow and Linden died because I had not come to find them. I resumed my weak attempts to stand.

  Bronya looked amazed. “So they went through with the plan, then? They sent out guardians to watch over all the girls? I’m very glad Yarrow is the one who came to you. Your parents would have been pleased.”

  I stopped again. Had Yarrow known my parents too and never said so?

  “Siria, please,” said Bronya, startling me out of my thoughts. “You really can’t leave yet. You’re not well enough. The fever may be gone, but you haven’t eaten anything in days. Stay a little longer—please. Get your strength up again before you set out. What if Yarrow sent you here on purpose?”

  I gave up and sat back down, impressed by this argument. It would be like Yarrow to do something like that. And I had to concede she was right: no matter how desperate I was to find my friends, it was obvious I was too weak to travel. The simple struggle against my blankets had defeated me.

  I nodded. “Thank you . . . for taking care of me. I think I would have died otherwise.”

  Bronya reached for my hand and squeezed it. Hers was small and soft but callused like Linden’s hands—evidence of hard work. I squeezed back.

  “I’ll bring you some soup,” she said. “But stay in the barn. There’s a ro
yal warrant for your arrest, you know. Anyone catches sight of your skin or hair, you’ll be on your way to Umbraz before you can say ‘sunchild.’”

  30

  CHAPTER

  The people who farmed Terra-Volat did not have much to live on, but Bronya was an excellent cook. It amazed me she could turn a few pale vegetables and a pot of water into a savory soup, or a handful of grain into a loaf of soft, sweet bread.

  “We’re better off than some,” she admitted when I marveled over the quality of her cooking. “Most people outside of Umbraz barely have enough to keep them from starving. But some farmers, like us, produce more than the standard, and we’re rewarded with a little extra food.”

  “Why do you produce more?”

  “Roark and I farmed long before the overthrow, and we know how to get the best results, even in poor conditions. Most who labor for Iyzabel worked in other trades before she took control, and they don’t really know what they’re doing. Fifteen years is long enough to learn to get by, but nowhere near long enough to master a trade without tutelage.”

  Yet Bronya did not seem to be doing much farming during my stay. For two days she spent nearly all her time sitting with me in the barn, telling me stories about her childhood with my mother. I learned that, like me, Elysia had spent many of her formative years running wild out of doors, playful and curious. When she turned eleven, my grandfather had insisted she start learning his trade, but she had resisted because she didn’t like wearing shoes, and his craft was making and repairing them.

  Unlike me, however, my mother had been bold and fearless. That was why she caught Prince Auben’s heart a few years later. He was an insecure and fretful teenager, and when the king and queen hosted Luminor’s annual Festival of the Sun, he had disguised himself as a tanner to escape public notice. At the first night’s outdoor revelries, he’d been asked to dance by the dark-haired cobbler’s daughter, who thought he was handsome, and though he was too bad a liar to keep the truth from her, it didn’t seem to make any difference in how she treated him.

  He fell in love very quickly.

  Bronya also told me all she could remember about my brother Eamon, and though I knew he would be different now that he was a grown man, I drank in every word. Her stories made me feel a new kind of longing to reach the Northern Wilds. Suddenly it was more than just the promise of safety and sunlight and meeting some abstract person who was my brother; it was getting to know the dark-haired boy who had learned to swordfight almost before he knew how to walk, who had hated carrots so much he snuck them from the table into his pocket and threw them from the highest tower window, and who had solemnly promised our mother at my birth that he would protect his baby sister even if he had to fight a sea serpent to do it.

  On the morning of my seventh day in Bronya and Roark’s barn, I told her, with a regret so strong it surprised me, that I felt well enough to leave. Her face fell, but she hid her disappointment behind an understanding smile. I had only seen her husband once since I’d been awake, and I suspected he feared what I might ask when it came time for me to go.

  I asked anyway.

  “Come with me? You and Roark, I mean. Help me find Yarrow, and then come with us to the Northern Wilds.”

  Bronya squeezed her brown eyes shut. Then she sat down beside me on the rickety bench beside the dairy cow’s stall.

  “Siria, I want you to know that meeting you and talking with you these last few days has been one of the greatest joys of my life. When I learned, all those years ago, that you had survived . . . I used to pray I might see you again one day.” She paused and drew a deep breath, as though preparing to dive underwater. “But I made a promise to Roark, and I won’t break it. Nor will I leave without my husband.”

  “Why doesn’t he like me?”

  She smiled again. “Oh, my dear, it’s nothing like that. He—we lost a great deal in service to the rebels. Roark decided then that no cause was worth the loss of loved ones. We left the north and began farming for Iyzabel, because that was the only way he felt he could keep me from harm.” She sighed. “He’s afraid you’ll pull me away from safety again.”

  “Oh.” I swallowed. “Who . . . who did you lose?”

  Bronya looked down at her hands, twisted in her lap. “Iyzabel has many eyes and ears, and in those days we were working to infiltrate her spy network. Roark feigned interest in her service . . . but she found out that we were loyal to Luminor. We had . . . children . . . in those days. Two little girls, and—” Bronya’s voice cracked, and she broke off.

  I could only stare at her, horrified, as she cleared her throat and continued.

  “Roark blamed the rebels, even though he knew it wasn’t their fault. It was easier for him, I think, to imagine that leaving them would in some way bring justice for his daughters. He thinks the resistance is doomed. I don’t agree entirely, but I do think it will take miraculous power to overthrow Iyzabel. Our people are too weak to fight, and so many have been seduced by the Darkness. Its power strengthens year by year.”

  Bronya’s expression was dark, and I dropped my gaze to stare into my own lap. It was sickening to think about. I had felt Iyzabel’s seductive power myself, and it had taken both transformation and loss to shake me out of the longing to serve her. A sudden and unexpected stab of sympathy for Phipps and Milla pierced my thoughts: their behavior may not have been right, but perhaps it was at least understandable in light of Iyzabel’s influence. If she could spread that kind of power through her Darkness, I doubted whether we could ever overturn her rule. Surely the people would revolt if we tried.

  And yet, Yarrow believed . . .

  But Yarrow had been disappointed in Bronya and Roark for leaving the rebels, even after their children had been murdered. I felt a squirm of disquiet at the thought. Did that make Yarrow deluded, or callused . . . or cruel? Was he ignoring the odds and leading me to my death?

  “Bronya,” I said after a long time. “I’m sorry about your daughters.”

  She looked at me with wet eyes, and started to speak, but couldn’t. This time I wrapped my arms around her shoulders and held her as she cried.

  That evening, both Bronya and Roark came to the barn, each with an armful of supplies. Between them they carried a full waterskin, several days’ worth of dry food, a small pouch of gold coins, and the clothes I’d had in my rucksack when I arrived—freshly laundered, mended, and smelling of sweet woodruff. And several things more.

  “Something to cover your face,” said Bronya, handing me a thick, knitted scarf. “It’s cold enough, you shouldn’t look out of place. If you wear your cloak and hood, and dress like a boy, I think you’ll go pretty well unnoticed.”

  “And this,” said Roark, his deep voice kind, though his wind-weathered, pale face looked concerned behind his black beard, “is for you to protect yourself. If you can, try and wield it with your left hand until that right arm is fully healed.”

  He was holding out a dagger in a copper sheath, completely engraved with intricate, swirling patterns. Set in the hilt was a yellow stone, gleaming dully in the lamplight.

  I stared at it.

  “This is already yours, actually,” said Bronya with a smile. “Your mother had it made after you were born. It’s the traditional weapon of a sunchild. The citrine in the hilt provides some kind of link to you, and you can use it in ways ordinary humans can’t.”

  I stared at her. “Yarrow told me about this . . . But how—?”

  “Elysia gave it to me a week before the overthrow, though she wouldn’t say why. All she said was that I was to keep it safe for the future, just in case. I thought she was being paranoid. Now, of course, I know she had learned of Iyzabel’s desire to kill you and intended to do what she could to protect you, at any cost.” Bronya looked wistfully at the dagger, still extended toward me in her husband’s hands. “I almost forgot I had it. Perhaps you were meant to come here.”

  I took the weapon, turning it over reverently while I examined the scrollwork. My mothe
r had once held this dagger in her own hands.

  “Thank you. Thank you both.” I hugged Bronya, breathing in the clean, herby scent of her as she held me tightly, stroking my back. If only she could have adopted me instead of Milla. I wished I could give her something in return for the care and generosity she and Roark had shown.

  At last I pulled back and smiled at her. Her eyes were wet.

  “I hope I see you both again someday,” I said, offering Roark a hand to shake.

  But he smiled through his beard and pulled me into a hug as well, his arms and chest broad enough to swallow me up. “Take care, lass.”

  “Be safe,” whispered Bronya, reaching up to kiss my cheek.

  At the door of the barn, she and Roark both stopped. As solemn and formal as courtiers, both swept me a low bow.

  I stood still, facing the inside of the door long after it had closed, the citrine dagger hanging loose in my hand as I struggled to master my emotions. After a few moments I realized the barn was lit with bright, golden light.

  31

  CHAPTER

  I crept out of the Dells’ barn as soon as I could sense the sun rising beyond the Darkness the next morning, wearing my cloak, deerskin jacket, and Linden’s old leather trousers. Bronya’s scarf was wrapped several times around the lower half of my face and my neck, and I had rubbed dirt into the visible skin around my eyes so my freckles wouldn’t draw attention. I pulled my hood low, hair wrapped in a linen scarf beneath it, hiked the rucksack higher on my back, and set off.

  Despite the danger, I had decided to take the Queen’s Road north, continuing toward the rebel camp, rather than search the forest for my friends. If they were dead, their bodies would have been taken to the queen as proof; and if alive, Yarrow’s magic would most likely keep them hidden. But they would be looking for me. I resolved to leave them clues and hope for the best.

  The first afternoon, as I was walking between two fields of scrawny-looking cornstalks in the hazy half-light of the day, I felt and then heard the shudder of hoofbeats approaching behind me. I looked wildly around for someplace—anyplace—to hide, spotted a stile in the weathered stone wall of one cornfield, and sprinted off the road.