He doesn’t care though. “Where’s your sister? I need to help her. Seeing as she’s our only hope. You might as well go join your brother. The two of you belong together.” He grabs my chin, and pulls on it, yanking. “You’re useless now.”
Useless.
I am useless now.
I clench my jaw. I can feel my broken and un-whole heart heating me to record temperatures. My anger stokes the fire, oxygen feeding a ravaging beast, and I’m about to set my own father on fire once and for all.
Instead I use a different weapon. The one I earned. The one I trained. My body.
I don’t turn on the burners. I don’t light the torches. I take the thing that is still mine—my charred hands—and I grab his throat.
I hold him tight around his flesh, digging the pads of my thumbs deep into the hollow of his throat, hunting for his trachea. He coughs and sputters and spits out my name. “Stop, Aria,” he chokes out.
My fingers have found purchase in the back of his neck, and I will never let up, I will never let go until there’s no more air inside him. I am so strong, my hands are so powerful, I have muscles all over my body, and especially underneath the scarred and ugly skin of my hands. My fingers are steel, my wrists are iron, my forearms are merciless beasts that hold my father in place. I may have stolen every last ounce of fire inside me, but I worked for every inch of my strength.
I can do this. I can hold tight until he turns blue. Until he rasps out his last strangled word. I am capable.
Yet … I feel my fingers loosening.
Because I’m not him.
I can’t do this.
I can’t kill my father.
I stop, dropping my hands to my sides, my chest heaving from the exertion, from the shock of what I almost did. What I can’t ever do. I will not be like him.
My father slumps to the floor, gasping for breath but fully alive.
I stare at my hands as if they’re strange foreign objects, these tools that could have killed him. Now they dangle at my sides as the color returns to Dad’s face. He starts to rise and I have no idea what happens next.
Then there’s a loud ripping sound. I turn to the screen door.
The snow gator is here and he’s lumbering into our house. He looks at me, those big brown eyes as sweet as they were when he let me pet his head. As he turns his long reptilian snout away from me, I understand what happened yesterday on the porch. I understand what the Lady meant. He’ll take care of you when you need him to.
He spies my father and snaps his massive jaw.
My father does what any Floridian should do. He backs away from the beast. But those fat little gator legs are furiously fast, and the snow gator knows what he wants. He wants a meal, he wants a former fire-eater. My father scurries down the hall to the bedroom, no thought to my mother, no thought to me, and tries to slam his door. But there’s no time; the snow gator barges into the bedroom, his snout already pushing the door open. I follow, pressing my back against the hallway wall, and I watch as my father jumps onto his bed. The gator follows, tearing the sheets and covers as he goes. My father jumps off and grabs for the sliding glass door to our backyard, trying to unlock it quickly, terror in his eyes. The same terror I saw in Jana’s yesterday when she told the Lady what was happening to her hands.
The snow gator opens his snout as far as it can go and grasps my father’s leg, pulling the foot, then the calf into his mouth. There’s a sound of twigs snapping, and I cover my face with my hands.
I can’t watch. I close my eyes. I hear a crunch, then one final shriek. There’s a muffled noise, then silence.
Soon I peer through my fingers from the hallway, dumbfounded, at the armored animal in my father’s bedroom who has just swallowed a man whole. The snow gator’s belly is distended, like a snake that’s just consumed a rat.
I don’t make a move. I remain very still. The snow gator stays in place, wriggles a bit, then huffs out hard, and I’m horrified that the snow gator might expel my father, regurgitate him on the newly carpeted floor of the bedroom, leaving me to either put my father back together or clean up the mess.
Neither option appeals.
So I wait.
The snow gator exhales, then shifts one more time, as if he’s loosened a belt buckle after Thanksgiving dinner and is now satisfied. He’s accommodated his new inhabitant. He waddles a few inches to the sliding door, pawing at it with his big claws, looking longingly at the canal that’s not far away. I know what I have to do. I have to give the snow gator a safe escape, just as he gave my sister one.
He is one hell of a cleanup crew, and I will find a way to take care of him whenever the Lady needs me to. I step gingerly into the bedroom, walking carefully by the creature that just ate my father, and I open the sliding glass door for him. The gator glances at me, his eyes soft again.
I lean over to pet his snout. “Thank you.”
I stand and he leaves, two hundred pounds heavier than when he entered our house, plodding slowly across the grass of the backyard, slogging his way to the canal, then back to the Everglades, back to the Lady.
It never once occurred to me that he might hurt me too. He would have considered it rude.
30
Reversal of Fortune
I’m not going to lie. I’ve envisioned my father’s end countless times. I’ve also pictured my reaction. I always assumed I’d be shocked or terrified or knocked into a near-catatonic state, staring at my own hands, staggered that I’d actually done it, amazed that I’d acted on every base desire I’d ever had to incinerate him.
His ashes on my hands, his soot in my throat.
Never have I thought I’d be happy. Never have I contemplated that elation would overcome me after my father’s death.
But elation is what I’m feeling because I’m looking at my mother. The same swirling tendrils of smoke and sweet mist that emanated from Taj’s hands two nights ago are now cocooning my mother, lifting her up from her chair, swirling her in slow circles inches above the ground. Her eyes are huge, round orbs mystified by the undoing.
The wish no longer has any hold on her. The bonds of it are broken. It simply no longer applies—because only one of them is living—and so it must unravel.
I walk carefully down the hall, at a tiptoe pace, afraid to disturb but anxious to see. Hope fills me up, a breathless wonder at something I’ve wanted to see for so long. As the smoke spirals her, her body begins to transform. Her flaccid legs are being sculpted again. Her slack, shapeless parts are redrawn by the mist, traced anew as she’s returned to the way she was so many years before, the way I remember her when I was younger, when she was chiseled and firm.
Her hair, limp and lifeless, is lifted by the smoke, as if it’s being brushed tenderly, then curled and colored into the dark, springy cut she once had. Her face starts to change, as if the pallidness is fading away and in its place are bright eyes and pink cheeks. But it’s not a face-lift; she still has lines, she’s still her age. Only, she looks healthy. She looks incredibly, remarkably healthy, and it’s the most welcome sight in the world.
It’s her. And she’s well.
Gently, the smoke lowers her to the ground, curves in on itself, and vanishes.
My mother looks down at her legs, then at her arms; she even runs a hand across her taut belly underneath her shirt, astonished at the reboot of her body. She’s a fairy-tale character who’s been visited by the good witch, by a benevolent godmother, and she’s both bewildered and delighted with the transformation.
“You’re back,” I say, and I run to her. Her solid arms wrap around me, holding me tight. This is the mom I missed. The brave one, the strong one.
I pull back to regard her once more, my hands in her hands. “You’re beautiful,” I say, and that’s how I know my father is really and truly dead, and he’s not coming back.
His work has been undone.
“Thank you,” she says to me, though I didn’t do this. But maybe when I touched the snow gator’s
head, I activated something, set in motion the animal’s instinct. Or maybe the Lady sent him on this mission to right a wrong, to restore some small semblance of justice in the Kilandros family. No wonder she wanted to win the snow gator so badly. He’s quite a prize.
My mother looks at the door.
“Go!” I say, encouraging her.
She walks to the door, no longer taking tentative, shuffling steps, but instead walking on strong, sturdy legs. I hold the door open for her, and bask in the sight of my mother walking outside for the first time in years, the sun beating down on her skin. She looks up at the sky, letting the rays coat her face. Then she turns to me, a smile so big and radiant it could warm me for the rest of my days. A tear of happiness slides down her cheek.
It is glorious.
Then I wait. I wait for the Leagues to come for me. I wait for them to wrap metal around my wrists and make a show of me, like they did with Reginald. I’d be a prize to trot before the cameras; a real warning. A top M.E. Leagues performer caught not only using a granter but also apprehended for having stolen the elements. I’d be the perfect elemental artist to make an example of, a warning sign for generations of youth to come.
Here’s what happens when you steal.
Here’s what happens when you wish.
A future vanished, a lifetime ban from performing. A forever ban for the family.
They have to be coming for me like they did for Reginald. Imran knows what I wished for, so he has to know my stage name wasn’t a lie, after all. It was the truth, under his nose from the very start.
But Imran doesn’t show. No one shows, except the Division of Wildlife officer the next morning. My mother called the department to officially report my father’s death. She is suddenly businesslike and competent as she handles what needs to be done.
Jana and I sit on the couch in the living room while my mother talks to him.
“Then an alligator just broke into the house and ate my husband,” she says, reporting the facts, managing to push out a few tears. I think they might be real. I think a part of her is sad. But a bigger part, a more important part, is moving on.
“You saw it happen,” one of the officers says to me. He has a mustache and holds a small spiral notebook. “Any distinguishing characteristics on this animal?”
He’s ice cold. He acts like a dog. He protected my sister and me. He lives deep in the Everglades with the wisest woman I’ve ever known. Some might call her a guardian angel.
“He was green,” I say. I assume a sad look, like I miss what the snow gator ate. I glance at Jana, my eyes telling her to be quiet. She reads me instantly, understanding the direction. She knows the gator saved me, and saved her, so she doesn’t say a word.
The wildlife officer scribbles something in his notebook, then tells my mother he’ll be in touch.
She walks him to the door, even escorts him out to his vehicle, just because she can. She comes back in the house. “I don’t think we’ll be seeing him again,” she says, and there’s a wink in her voice.
She claps her hands together once, looks from me to Jana. “Now, shall we start packing up the house?”
“Why?”
“I thought we might want to get out of Florida.”
“But, Mom, I have friends here,” Jana protests, and they continue like that for the next hour, pushing and pulling, resisting and insisting, and there’s something strangely comforting to witnessing the exchange. It’s the closest thing to normal I’ve ever seen in my family.
That night I take my sister pool hopping. The Markins are back in town, but another family next door to them is gone for a few days, so we sneak into their screened-in pool.
Jana dives in quietly this time, but when she surfaces she has that same bright smile she had the last time we swam together.
“This is how I like to swim,” she says when she reaches me.
“This is how you should swim,” I say, pushing wet strands of hair off my face. “Race?”
She nods, gives me my head start, and I shoot off underwater. As usual, she beats me. As usual, I don’t mind one bit.
“Don’t go,” she says as we tread water in the deep end.
“You have no idea how much I wish I could stay.”
Elise bursts through my door and grabs me. I smile and she beams, but we are both sharing smiles of regret. I told her everything on the phone last night.
“I guess my weekend leave was too late,” she says. “For everything.”
“It’s okay. I was always a ticking time bomb.”
“This is all my fault.”
I shake my head. “It’s not your fault.”
“I should have swum to shore. I should never have joined the Lookouts. I should have chained myself to your side.”
“Stop,” I say, and walk into my front yard with her. We sit on the sidewalk, under a small patch of shade from an overgrown palm tree. “You saved my life for many years. Now I have to pay up.”
“I would have done this forever.”
“It’s fine. I mean, it sucks. But it’s fine. At least Jana is safe, and my mom is back.”
“So you have to be the sacrificial whatever?”
I shrug. I’ve had the last few years to get ready for this in some ways. I always knew I was living on borrowed time. I always knew I was dying. “It’s just the way these deals work.”
“The deal sucks.”
“Yeah. Some deals do suck. I’ll give you that.”
She leans her head on my shoulder, and I pet her hair. This may be the first time I’ve comforted her.
Time marches forward quickly, and when the seventh day arrives, the house is packed, the for sale sign is posted in the front yard, and Jana has barely accepted this newfound authority figure in her life. Jana’s only known our mom as helpless. My mother has never set the rules, never made the decisions for my sister. Now she’s doing just that.
“It’s time for a change, Jana,” my mother says.
Jana slams her door, and I’m about to go talk to her, to try to help her understand, but then three figures appear in a whoosh in my driveway. Like they sailed through the sky and are floating down on invisible umbrellas.
One of them is Taj, and my heart leaps from my chest. I want to run to him, to touch him, to talk to him, to spend the night on a rooftop. He’s back!
But he doesn’t look at me. He’s aloof, and his eyes are trained far away from me, fixed on some unseen point behind my head. I swallow, and my throat is dry. Why is he looking away from me? Why isn’t he happy to see me too? Even if it’s only for the exchange. My heart beats too fast, like a hummingbird, and I wish it would settle down.
The man and the woman with him walk toward my door. I try to will him to meet my eyes. To look up, to notice me, to connect with me as he always did. But he stares past me. Only the man and woman look at me.
The man wears a well-fitted suit, dove gray with slim pink pinstripes, and aviator sunglasses. The woman is dressed in a silk blouse, pencil skirt, and sleek black heels. She has long blond hair with a luxuriant wave to it. Are they coming to take me away or to give me a makeover?
“Sorella,” the woman says, then flashes a badge inside a wallet, as a cop would do. She uses only her first name, and the badge is gold—real gold, hard metal. It says The Union of Granters. “From the Union. Compliance Bureau.” She tips her forehead to the gentleman. “This is Barry.”
Barry? A woman named Sorella works with a man named Barry?
I open the door and step outside. I cross my arms and glance at Taj, trying to connect silently with him. But the spot behind my head is endlessly fascinating to him, and it aches inside my chest, the way he won’t acknowledge me.
Then he meets my eyes, and his are cold and conniving.
Like a blinding light, I get it. I step back, hold on to the doorway, because it feels like I might fall. I’m so stupid, so foolish. I never saw it coming. He was using me all along to engineer his own freedom from the start.
This is the real Taj now. This is the Taj I met the first night. The trickster, toying Taj. The cool Taj who didn’t care for his fate.
All the other nights, he was acting. It’s like I’ve been punched in the gut, and I want to double over in pain, to press my teeth into my lips because this hurts so much, knowing he played me the whole time, and I fell for his routine.
Right from the start when he asked me to wait to wish.
He set me up, took me on dates, stretched out the whole ruse, told me granter secrets, provisos, stories about falling in love, stories about payment—about offering oneself for payment. So I could fall for him. So he could be free. He held me off from wishing all the time so he could buy time. I bought it all, hook, line, and sinker. I believed it all, from the green light at the end of the dock to the stars above the rooftop, to the hope that stories well told could free you from your fate.
Like a seduction, and I was the one seduced.
Oh, but he was right. He wove fables full of kisses, full of sad eyes, full of dreams for a wisher who’d fall in love with him and free him. He got what he wanted—freedom granted from a fool.
“Some story you told,” I say sharply to him, because I never stray far from my store of anger.
He says nothing. His face isn’t even stony. Just indifferent toward me.
“You could make your story one thousand and two, don’t you think,” I say, spitting words out at him. “The granter and the Girl Prometheus. Make an addendum to Arabian Nights, because you’re just as good.”
The Fire Artist Page 19