Silence, but for a distant howl of wind. I can read the children’s moods by the subdued colours in their fiery hair, all oranges and yellows. A dozen or so pairs of eyes are fixed on the snowy ground.
“This is why we no longer heed the plane of mortals,” Mama says quietly.
What? I try to speak it, but she hasn’t asked for my reaction, so I can’t. I spread my hands, hoping the supplicating gesture will do. The few moments of speech have spoiled me and now I keenly feel its loss.
Neither Mother nor Mama look at me now. Mama has let herself say this to the children so that I can hear it. I’m sure of it. So she must intend to follow through. She must.
She doesn’t.
The portal opens. Through it I see a world of fire. My home. I yearn to reach toward it but I know I’ll only be knocked unconscious if I try to rush the aperture, or even draw too near—I can only approach the structure carefully, from the side.
My parents gather the children and shepherd them through, without another word or glance to me. They can’t let on that I’m their daughter around the children. That would shift focus from the lesson they’re meant to learn. I’m a cautionary tale, not an object of pity or a damsel to be rescued. If any of them should be compelled to rescue me, they must come to it on their own.
But they will not. Ours is a race of passion, not compassion. Fire devours and cleanses all in its path. It gives no consideration to the unwary.
Be wary, my presence here teaches them. Look on this freezing wretch and remember her. Do not slip your tethers. The mortal plane is not for you.
The rest have all gone through when Mama, bringing up the rear, pauses. “Close one, today,” she says to no one in particular, and then steps through.
Silence rings loud in my ears.
I turn and walk idly toward my caves. I need to think.
What do they do, then, in this new demon utopia where the threat of summoning by mortals has become obsolete? Do they keep their tethers all their lives? Do they still train in the arcane arts? Do they still hone the strength of their mental self-control?
In my youth, I learned how to resist a call, how to accept one, how to throw another demon into a summon if I did not want to go. How to defeat a summoner and return home at will. Without these things, what is there? How does society function if no one is ever swept away without warning?
If I ever get out of exile, will I recognize the world I return to?
I sleep fitfully and dream of bonfires. Even in dreams I’m never warm.
I wake with the words “Close one, today” ringing in my ears. Hope is dangerous. Hope distracts me and makes me weak.
Nuala knew just what she was doing. The curse can only be broken by one who does not know how to break the curse. One of those little shits has to feel sympathy for me and want to warm me of their own accord. But I’ve been cast as a villain and deprived of the voice to explain myself, so that may never happen. I’m unlikely to ever inspire kindness, Nuala’s words loudly implied.
This was the reward for trying to save a summoner’s heart. Look on it, little children, and meddle not in the affairs of mortals.
Let them burn.
DAYS GO BY without another “close one,” but I still see that moment every time I shut my eyes. I don’t need to sleep, but I like sleep. It helps to pass the time. Without it, time passes slowly and thoughts zip about like embers, singeing wherever they settle.
When I see the dark shape in the snow, I assume it’s a hallucination. Not a mirage, because mirages require heat and the only heat in this place is me.
Closer, carefully closer. I’m positive I’m losing my mind, I’ve finally cracked, because it looks like a person. It looks like the one person it can’t possibly be.
I kneel in the snow, hands hovering but afraid to close the distance. If this really is a torment made in my own mind and my hand goes through her, I may never trust my own senses again.
Yet, that’s still better than whatever it might mean if this is real.
I’m losing feeling in my legs. It’s time to decide. I lower my hand, and—
Solid. Wet, limp silk, sweat-soaked hair freezing in crisp clumps like arctic lichen.
Nuala.
Time has touched her. There are lines at the corners of her eyes. Someone has touched her, too, and not gently. Burns crust her face, raw and oozing. Burns decorate her body, wherever skin is visible.
I lift her, surprised I have the strength to—either I am not as weak as I thought, or she has very little substance left—and I carry her into my caves, out of the wind. I warm her. At least my fire is of use to someone, if not to me.
Holding her while she slumbers floods me with memories, all overlain by her face, twisted with rage, when she pronounced my curse. It hurts more than frostbite, more than solitude. I wonder if this is a test of some kind. Of my compassion, maybe, to see if I’ve been punished sufficiently yet. It could well be, but I find that I don’t care. I will do what I will do for my own reasons, no one else’s.
Different voices are loud in my head now. These voices, at least, let me sleep.
“Izelle.”
For the first time in an age, I don’t know what I’m going to see when I open my eyes.
“Izelle, I know you’re awake.”
She always could tell.
“You were right about the boy. Lenzhen. The dragon. Whatever he is. I’m sure that’s what you want to hear. Well, it’s true. He hurt me. He was too much. Too cruel. I thought I could tame him the way I tamed you.”
It stings right to the quick. And she hasn’t asked anything of me, so I can’t retort. I huff and elbow her in the side. She ignores both.
“I thought you were just jealous of him. Now I understand what you saw. What you tried to warn me of. Dammit, I’m confessing to you. The least you could do is look at the wreck of me.”
No, if I’d done my least I would have left her where I found her, to freeze. I’ve already done more than the least. When she cursed me, she dismissed me. She has no power to compel me anymore. I leave my eyes closed.
A confession is not an apology.
She huffs and turns over, shutting me out. I wonder if she remembers the limits she put on my speech. Is she deliberately avoiding questions to keep me from talking, or has she just forgotten?
Or is she that accustomed to giving orders instead of asking?
She’s muttering to herself. “. . . send you to wherever you sent your demon wench . . .” and “. . . see if anyone keeps you warm.” She sounds delirious, but from her grumblings I can piece together a chain of events.
She is not here for me. I’m meant as her punishment and that is how she sees me. Karma made flesh, nothing more.
I withdraw my heat from her.
“Don’t you dare stop,” she snaps at me.
She has no control over me. I stop.
Nuala rolls onto her back, wincing, and shrugs. “Fine. Cold is good for burns, anyway.”
I watch her until she starts to shiver in silence. She could ask for my help. Request it. She doesn’t.
I turn away.
BY THE TIME my chronometer signals the arrival of the next class, Nuala’s wet clothes and raw skin have frozen to the ice. Fused to it. She screams when I rip her free. More than frozen silk stays behind.
I don’t press myself to the portal. I savour the cold. It’s colder for Nuala, because she could be warm at any time for the small cost of a little kindness. It’s colder for Nuala because she’s only endured one night of it, and considers that equal to the eternities of torment to which her words sentenced me. Were they careless words? I still don’t know. It doesn’t matter. That’s what I’ve learned. Whether she meant the curse or it was a heated response to a heated moment, she’s never regretted; never had remorse.
Knowing this . . . I’m not comforted by it, but it’s enough.
Mama comes through first and halts in her tracks. The first little ember bumps right into her before she rememb
ers her hooves and moves out of the way.
When Mother comes through, Mama grasps her hand and clings to it.
Silence. Long moments of it.
I imagine what this must look like to Nuala. A cluster of crimson-skinned creatures, most small, led by two stern women. If she thinks they’re considering how her frosty white flesh would taste, she’s not far wrong.
I tighten my fist in Nuala’s stringy hair, forcing her head into a token bow. She wavers on her feet, so I let her fall to her knees. I keep hold of her hair.
“Izelle,” Mama says carefully, “who do you bring us today?”
“This is Nuala, Mama.” The mortal stiffens. “She’s the summoner who sentenced me here.”
Now she knows she’s not just before a jury of my kind, but a jury intimately connected to me.
The children have never seen a mortal, but they all know to fear the word “summoner.” Many of them take an instinctive step back, even though this summoner is in no condition to pose a threat. They can’t know that, I suppose. Those tethers they wear: have they ever been tested?
Nuala is still. She says nothing, having lost her urge to complain before a greater audience.
“Tell me more, Izelle. How did she come to you?”
“She was cursed to be exiled to wherever she’d sent me.”
“Ah. Are you pleased to see her?”
I’m uncomfortable suddenly. I don’t want to analyse my thoughts on this, and I want to admit to them even less. But I’ve been asked.
“I always thought I would be, but I also thought she’d be remorseful about how she’d treated me. But she wasn’t, so . . . no. Her presence adds to my torment.”
Mother appears to consider this, but I already know what she’s thinking. Suddenly it all plays out before me. And I smile a toothy smile. “Children?” She turns to the embers.
Nuala twitches. Now she sees the road before us, too.
“Set her on fire,” one ember squeaks. “Can we? Can we do it?”
The rest bounce on their hooves, excited. “Can we?” It becomes a cacophonous chorus. Excitement sparks from child to child; it blazes alight.
“Go ahead, sparks.”
The children are glowing. Pent up energy spills out their eyes and fingers. Their hair blazes.
I miss the first spark. I don’t know which of the children sets it off. Nuala’s hair catches first. She almost seems to welcome the warmth for a moment. Then the flames reach her skin. I’m still behind her, holding her by the hair, and by hell, she’s warm. I’d forgotten what heat feels like. It’s absolute bliss. Like sinking into silk.
The children stare. My parents stare too, with teary hope in their eyes. When I pull back and make a show of toasting my palms on her flaming hair, they see. They can’t show extreme emotion before the kids.
The colour returns to my skin. My arms darken, changing from frost pink to my natural crimson.
It’s working.
It’s working.
Nuala thrashes weakly. Flames crackle up my arms, warm my torso, lick at my chin.
Someone who didn’t know how to lift the curse set a fire. And it warmed me.
“It’s . . . It’s broken, I think,” I say, experimenting. The words come out, so it must be true.
I’m reluctant to let go of Nuala’s burning corpse, as if the snow will quench her and the curse will return. I add to it, making my own flame, and I feel it.
I keep my hand in her hair while Mama and Mother rush up and embrace me. They add their heat to mine. The embers circle us, dancing and cheering.
I drop my tormenter’s body only when it’s time to go through the portal. I consider taking her with me, but she doesn’t deserve my home. Her corpse will freeze, preserved on ice. I leave her as a visual aid for the next generations of students.
“Close one, today,” I say to no one in particular as I step through.
Aitvaras
R.W. Hodgson
ANNA OPENED THE door of the small cottage to find four neat stacks of coins on the stoop glinting in the last rays of the summer sun. She shut the door and pressed her back against it. Her blood ran cold.
There was a tremendous rush outside like the sound of a windstorm, though the branches of the tree beyond the yellowed window did not move. Then the knock came again. There will be no hiding from this.
She took a slow, steady breath and opened the door. She could see nothing but feet, belly, and a tip of a snout. A black dragon drummed long charcoal talons on her wooden step, its scaly lips parted over inky teeth. It emitted a growl with a tone that could only be described as “satisfaction”.
Anna kept her head upright and her eyes forward though her legs were shaking. The dragon dissolved into a puff of dark smoke that skidded around her skirt and into the small cottage. In front of the hearth it re-formed, as a cockerel, ebony from the top of its comb to the tip of its claws, save for five long tail feathers of flame. There was a burst of fire to her side as the money materialized on the table.
The creature paced along the back wall, light from its plumes making shadows dance across the floor. It brushed its tail over the hearth, lighting a pile of neatly stacked logs.
“Good evening, Anna,” it said. The beak did not move, the deep voice emanated from every wall.
Anna swallowed. “Aitvaras, you have returned.”
“I have. And, in honour of our new home, I have brought you a gift.”
Anna inched towards the table. Two stacks of gold chervonetz, another two of silver roubles all on top of two ten-chervonetz notes. More cash than she’d seen in one place in five years, perhaps even in her life.
“Where did you get it?”
“That does not matter; it is yours now.”
She shook her head. “We’ve been bartering for everything for a year. Adomas had to save for weeks just to scrape up enough money for his ticket to Kaunas. And what would I do with this?” She turned a coin over in her hand. “Waltz into the village and hand over a gold chervonetz to buy a cow? Wouldn’t that seem strange? But that’s the point, isn’t it?”
The aitvaras cocked its head.
Anna scooped up the money in one swift motion, opened the front door and tossed it out. “Well, I don’t want it.”
With another puff, the money re-appeared on the table.
“And yet, it is for you and for Adomas.”
A knot wound in Anna’s stomach. Adomas had gone to Kaunas five months ago, at the risk of being discovered, to find a girl he had met in the resistance, marry her, and bring her back to this small spit of a village. Anna had stayed to hold their place and to make this shabby cottage into a home. Last week Adomas had finally sent word he’d be returning with his new wife. They were to arrive tomorrow morning on the overnight train.
Anna was also married, or, at least, she had been; the Soviets had deported him in 1940 and that was the last she’d ever heard of him. But a wife for Adomas meant life for all of them: a home, children, and perhaps even a bit of happiness. Anna’s eyes swept the meagre, one-room cottage, which she’d slaved to clean and prepare; then shifted back to the aitvaras strutting the floor. It might have been a nice home, but now it might as well be ash.
Anna grabbed her kerchief from her bedpost and knotted it behind her ears. She gathered up the money again and pushed out the door of the cottage. The aitvaras followed, its head bobbing with each step. As soon as it was beyond the threshold, it regained the form of a dragon and its footsteps shook the ground underneath her feet.
She found a spot where the earth looked soft and dug with her fingers. She was used to this. She had worked on the local collective farm in the months her brother had been gone. Tools were few and far between, so it was sticks or rocks or her own bare hands that she used to work the earth.
The aitvaras sat next to her, hot breath on the back of her neck and a wing stretched over her like a canopy. She knew it could not hurt her directly, but its presence made her mouth dry and her heart beat faster.
>
During her childhood, she had only seen fleeting glimpses of the aitvaras as a dragon, but as a rooster the creature had been ever-present. It had strutted the rooms of her grandfather’s farmhouse, hopping up on the furniture, pacing the mantle, peering down at her with a shiny black eye from atop the clock in the hall. Back then, she had tried to chase it—a shadow with a candle for a tail—but her mother had caught her round the waist and whispered in her ear that it was an evil thing and would burn her if she touched it.
Though she was never courageous enough to test her mother’s word, it remained a strange and almost joyful thing for her to lay eyes on. That was until the morning she woke to find her mother crying and her grandfather and father standing solemnly by her uncle’s bedroom door. Her uncle had always been a drunkard, kept mostly dry by his personal poverty. The aitvaras had granted him the gift of a whole cask of wine and he’d drank himself to death.
Later, in 1928, the entire village’s crops failed and bags of grain appeared in their pantry. Her grandfather refused to accept them even though the whole family was starving. He took the bags into the village to return them, but the rightful owner was not the type to listen to reason and stabbed him. He never made it home.
Then there was the gold watch that appeared by her eldest brother’s bedside. He had been much more cautious in trying to find the owner, but was trampled by a runaway horse and cart with the accursed thing still clutched in his hand. From then on, Anna had tried to frighten the aitvaras away when her mother wasn’t there to scold her, but to it the waving arms of a little girl were nothing.
“Why did you leave?” Anna said softly─barely loud enough to be heard over the creature’s breath and the din of cicadas. Anna couldn’t say precisely when it had left, but one night, after they were forced to leave the farmhouse and were sleeping huddled in the forest, she realized she couldn’t remember the last time she had seen it.
Fire: Demons, Dragons & Djinns Page 21