The Flame in the Mist

by Kit Grindstaff

  In the far distance, a bell tolled. The vision imploded, scattering into tiny fragments. Jemma looked at Noodle, lying as still as a rat statue, his ruby eyes staring. He blinked, then shook himself, golden spikes of fur sticking up from his body.

  “Noodle … that was … you just showed me …?”

  He twitched his whiskers. Easier than words.

  “Who was carrying me?”

  “Me,” said a husky voice behind her. Jemma wheeled around, and saw a large shadow at the back of the cave. Instinctively, she shrank back.

  “Who are you?”

  “Me Bryn. Look after you till you well. Bryn like to do that.” Something chirruped. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Jemma saw a bird huddled in Bryn’s hand. He lifted it level with his lips and chirruped back at it. “Soon well, Sparrow. Soon mend wing. Girl land in tree, hurt you.” He looked up at Jemma. “You hurt too.”

  Bryn sat cross-legged, stroking the bird. His face looked as though it had been flattened by an anvil. His nostrils spread almost halfway across his cheeks, which were pitted with what Jemma knew to be pockmarks—the remnants of smallpox, described many times by Nox, who had a horror of disease. Bushy brows sprouted from a bony shelf jutting above Bryn’s small eyes, and he peered at her through a curtain of greasy-looking hair. But as alarming as his appearance was, Jemma felt safe under his gaze. He emanated kindness and calm.

  The bird fluttered to Jemma’s lap and rubbed its head on her fingers.

  “Sorry I hurt you, Sparrow,” she said, then looked at Bryn. “Hello, Bryn. Thank you for rescuing me.”

  “Hello.” Bryn crawled to a pot next to the fire and scooped some liquid from it into a wooden bowl, which he handed to Jemma. “Drink. Help heal.”

  The brew smelled like a combination of Drudge’s breath and rotting potatoes, and Jemma screwed up her face as she sipped. “How long have you lived here, Bryn?”

  Bryn’s eyes disappeared beneath a frown. “Don’t know,” he said. His voice was as low and resonant as the tone from the empty syrupwater flagons Jemma used to blow into. “Long ago, me, boy. Live up hill. In hut, by castle.” He pulled one of his hides around him. “My ma wash clothes there. But Bryn get sick. Bad man in cloak, he say no can stay—”

  “Nox? Nox Agromond?” Jemma gritted her teeth.

  Bryn shook his head. “No! Nox boy, like me. Bad man in cloak his pa. My ma, she bring me to forest, make well with plants, berries. Then she take me back to hut. But Nox’s pa scared. See my face, say Bryn still sick, must stay away. Nox cry, say he want me to stay and play, he lonely now without his sister—”

  “His twin sister! Yes, they were just little when she died.”

  “Mmmm.” Bryn smiled, revealing a row of startlingly white teeth. “She pretty. Hair red, but not like yours. Hers dark, like blood.”

  “You mean … you actually saw her—Malaena—alive?”

  “Oh, yes. We play. She nice. But one night, my ma say she hear screams. After, no more Malaena.”

  “How awful.” Jemma shuddered, and felt a pang of pity for the boy Nox had been, and for his twin sister. “What happened to her?”

  Bryn picked up a twig and drew patterns in the earth with it. “Ma says they kill Malaena because her skin white as snow. She got no Mark. Nox, he got Mark.”

  Jemma gasped, remembering Rue’s words: The Mark of Mord … Any Agromond born without it … done away with … “Oh, no,” she croaked. “Go on, Bryn. What happened after you were sent away again?”

  “We come here. Here, home. Many winters pass. Ma do good work, heal men who hurt at quarry. Me help too, she teach me. Then quarry shut down because crag lose its magic.”

  “Magic? What magic?”

  “Rock from crag give Power. Give Agroms Power. And they sell rock to men from far away, to give them Power too. Pay a lot. Make Agroms rich.”

  “So the rock’s magic—the Power it gave—was bad? Evil?”

  “No, no! Ma say, not good or bad. Magic is what men make it. Ask for bad, get bad. Ask for good, get good. But must use with respect.” He scratched his head. “She say, when you take from earth, you must give back, or earth die. Crag need something called sun. But Agroms not know. Hate sun. Love Mist. So they no feed crag, and rock die. Magic die. Power, gone.”

  “So that’s why everything was decaying! The crag needs sunlight—the very thing the Agromonds have been keeping away. Poor crag …”

  “After quarry shut, just Ma and me. We happy. Better than at hut.” Bryn’s eyes softened; he sighed, his eyebrows knitting into a single furry line. “One day,” he said, “Ma’s breath stop. She gone to the wind, to the stars. Me plant her body in earth.”

  “Oh, Bryn …” Jemma reached for his hand, wondering how anybody could bear such a lonely life. She couldn’t imagine how hers would have been without Marsh and Digby.

  “No sad!” Bryn said. “Ma grow into pretty flowers. See?” He looked up at the blooms on the shelf, and smiled. “Bryn not alone. Ma with me. Birds, animals too. Trees. Earth. All teach me, how make things better, make animals better, make you better. Me happy! Me make medicine, like Ma show me, like plants show me. But shiny things”—Bryn pointed at the two crystals—“they magic. Me hold them, get strange words in head. Like voice, but not. Say they want to be in girl’s hands. Me put them there. And then—you heal, fast, fast!”

  Jemma glanced at the rats, who were busy licking each other’s fur. Had they found a way to communicate with Bryn, as they did with her? Or had the crystals somehow spoken to him?

  “Me never seen that,” Bryn continued. “Just two days, two nights, you almost well! You got the magic too. You good, like my ma!”

  Jemma looked at him. She could feel his honesty, his wholesomeness. Could feel it in her, vibrating like the hum of a spinning top.

  “I hope you’re right, Bryn,” she said softly, pushing down thoughts of her Mark. Then his other words hit her. “Wait—I’ve been here two days and nights? Sprites! That means it’s Friday morning … which leaves only two days to find my parents—Noodle, Pie, we must go!” She pulled her hand away from Bryn’s. Sparrow, startled, flapped from her lap onto the ground.

  Bryn shook his head. “No! Not ready—”

  His warning came too late. Jemma tried to kneel. Pain seared through her splinted calf, and she fell back onto her bed of straw.

  “Oooowww!”

  “Bone, broke,” Bryn said apologetically. “Need more time to mend. Me go now, find more horsetail, more mugwort. Water too. Come, Sparrow.” He picked up several wineskins, including Jemma’s, then scooped the small bird into his hand.

  “Wait, wait!” Jemma grabbed Bryn’s sacking-clad foot. “I can’t just stay here! Can’t you heal me faster? I have to find my parents!”

  A shocked expression widened Bryn’s eyes. “Faster? You crazy! Anyway,” he added more gently, prying Jemma’s fingers from his makeshift bootee, “not me who heal you. Plants do that. And shiny things. Me just help. But you mend fast. Go soon.”

  “Tonight, then. I’ll go tonight.”

  Bryn shook his head. “Bird wing take days to mend,” he said. “Leg maybe take”—he frowned, counting slowly on his fingers—“five days or … six.”

  “Six days!” Jemma groaned, slumping back onto the straw. Finding her parents in time to be Initiated would be impossible now.

  “Me sorry,” Bryn said.

  From outside came the faintest strike of a distant bell. The castle is still plaguing me, Jemma thought, counting the tolls. Eleven. How much longer before she would be free of that dark sound? She crossed her arms and glared at the roof of the cave, vaguely aware of Bryn throwing another log onto the fire before he lolloped outside and into the Mist.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Identity

  Friday

  Noodle and Pie sat on top of the book, behind the crystals, staring at Jemma.

  You’re rude.

  Guilt prickled her skin. They were right. It was unfair of her to have bee
n short with Bryn. The delay wasn’t his fault, and besides, he had rescued her, salved her legs, given her healing potions. She should be thankful. She would be, if she could feel some sense of purpose, but now that she was bound to miss her Initiation, she felt as though all determination had just drained from her, leaving a heavy hollow in her stomach.

  Don’t give up. Crystals. Look at them.

  “But what’s the point, Rattusses? I’m stuck here!” Jemma’s body began to ache again, as if her growing despondency was spreading like poison through her blood, bringing worse thoughts to her head. What if not being Initiated meant she lost her Powers? Without them, who would she be? Just an ordinary girl, no threat to the Agromonds at all. “And Marsh is probably dead.” She sniffed. “I may as well face it.”

  But you’re alive. We’re alive.

  True. She had survived the forest’s ferocity, and falling off Mordwin’s Crag. So had Noodle and Pie, without suffering a single scratch. A spark of gratitude lit in her heart.

  Crystals. Look!

  Jemma sighed. “Maybe later, Rattusses.”

  Something small and weighty fell onto her arm: one of the crystals. It had two wet smudges on it. Noodle and Pie twitched their snouts.

  “You really want me to look at this, don’t you?” She picked it up and wiped off the rats’ nose marks, then peered into it. Its facets gleamed, throwing rainbow colors around the cave. So pretty … and so different from how gray it and its companion had looked when she’d first taken them from the jar in Nocturna’s room! Perhaps they were magical, like Bryn said. They had helped heal her, after all. She peered more deeply into the one she was holding. All right, she thought halfheartedly, show me. Nothing happened.

  “I don’t know, Rattusses.…”

  Noodle and Pie hopped onto her lap. Their furry faces appeared through the crystal, looking grossly enlarged by it. Jemma chuckled and sat up, then tried again. Still, nothing.

  Breathe!

  Jemma took several deep breaths. The bitter wormwood scent of Bryn’s concoction filled her head, calming her. Then she narrowed her eyes the way she imagined Marsh might have, and bored her gaze into the crystal. It glowed slightly. Curiosity nibbled at her, and she took another breath, relaxing her eyes. The glow expanded, then shrank again. Her eagerness growing, she focused on what the crystals supposedly represented, sharpening her intent.

  “What can you tell me about my parents?”

  The crystal glowed more strongly; Jemma peered more closely.

  “Show me. Please!”

  Faint blue-green spindles, like minute fronds of lightning, sparked back and forth along the crystal. Then slowly, the spindles spread like mauve tea across a tablecloth, joining together to form one solid glow—the same color as was shining from her Stone. The color of her eyes. She felt a tugging at her heart, as if a cord was attached to it, pulling her vision farther into the clear quartz. The light in the crystal changed, taking on hints of other colors, forming a pinkish-brown blur, with a darker brown outline.…

  “Sprites!” she gasped. “It’s making a picture … a face … a woman’s face!”

  Two darker areas appeared, two sapphire-blue eyes, blazing at her. Jemma willed the face to become clearer, to reveal itself completely, and for a second, it did—beautiful, and clear. But then, like a flare whose light is suddenly spent, the eyes disappeared and the crystal went dim.

  “No!” she said, desperate to hold on to the image. “Don’t go!”

  She grabbed the second crystal and peered into it, searching for another face—a man’s. The crystal twinkled faintly, then showed a hazy hint of eyes and mouth that quickly shrank as if retreating. “Mord take it!” She slammed it onto the hide blanket, making the rats jump. “Oh, sorry, Rattusses! It’s just … I saw … I think it might have been …”

  Jemma snatched up the book next to her and opened it, desperate for any clue. On impulse, she flipped to the back cover. Close to the spine was a razor-neat slit, with a corner of paper sticking out of it. She pulled it out, hands trembling, and unfolded three thin sheets, yellowed with age and frayed along the creases.

  At the top of the first one, inked in capital letters, was written: ANGLAVIAN BULLETIN. Just beneath that, in small print, was a date.

  “Eight days after my first birthday,” she murmured. Her eyes grazed the heading:

  SOLVAY CHILD STILL MISSING

  “Solvay! But … that’s Majem’s other name.…” An eerie feeling seeped into her veins, and, at the next words, seemed to leap out through her skin.

  The disappearance of one-year-old Jemma Solvay is still causing much consternation throughout the land. Two days after the abduction, the ANGLAVIAN BULLETIN has learned fuller details of the dreadful event.

  “Jemma Solvay!” Jemma yelped. “Noodle, Pie—that … that’s me! That’s who I am—Jemma Solvay!” Her gaze sped down the page.

  Beloved healers Lumo and Sapphire Solvay were traversing the Heathshire Moors en route to Yarville, at the edge of the Mist, where they were to minister to its smallpox-smitten townsfolk. As night approached, their coach was ambushed by a cloaked horseman who snatched the infant from her mother’s arms. A furious chase ensued, continuing over many miles. At one point, the horseman turned, felling the Solvays’ coachman, Julius Sharm, with his sword.

  Mr. Solvay unharnessed one of their four steeds and set off in pursuit, but the kidnapper fled into the thick of the Mist, and the unfortunate infant’s father was forced to turn back, unable even to summon a Luminal to go to her aid. He found his wife in much distress, although she had succeeded in bringing Mr. Sharm back from death’s door.

  “There’s no doubt who the kidnapper is,” a family spokesperson told us, pointing out the effect the Mist had had on Mr. Solvay. “Everyone knows it only attacks those who are after Them.”

  “Them,” of course, means the Solvays’ longtime adversaries, the Agromonds, whose ancestor Mordrake created the Mist hundreds of years ago, giving it the power to confuse and render insane any who intend harm to the Agromond family.

  “Oh, my … Oh, my …” Jemma gulped down air, trying to take the story in. Her parents—Lumo and Sapphire Solvay—were healers. Like Bryn and his mother. People who helped others, not destroyed them. And they were her people; this was her story too. It had flung her into a world beyond the castle, beyond the forest and Mist; a world primed for her by Marsh that felt deeply familiar. At last, she had found out who she was. Jemma Solvay. Moreover, Majem Solvay must be her ancestor—the magical Majem, not Mordrake or Mordana! Any trace of worry about being evil vanished as she fumbled for the next sheet of paper. It was dated two days later.

  HOPE FADING

  Mist Thwarts Solvay Attempts at Rescue

  Jemma Solvay’s grieving parents admitted today that their attempts to penetrate the Mist and rescue their daughter have been in vain. As Mr. Trufold, a family friend, told us, “Their desire to save her is too great. The Mist reads their minds, and they cannot venture in.”

  He went on to say that the mission to Yarville had been unnecessary, since no smallpox outbreak has occurred there. The call for help must therefore have been a lie, plotted by the Agromonds to ambush the Solvays and carry out their dastardly plan.

  When asked how the abduction could have happened so soon after

  Here the ink was smudged and unreadable. Jemma skipped to the next sentence.

  The Solvays, exhausted by their terrible loss, have now returned to their home in Oakstead, where they will likely remain.

  “Oakstead,” Jemma murmured. “That’s where they are.” She branded the name onto her mind. It was hard to focus on the passages that followed.

  MISSING CHILD STILL ALIVE!

  A Different Kind of Abduction?

  … Initiation Stone taken with her … under normal circumstances, used on her thirteenth birthday to bring her fully into the realm of the Solvays’ healing legacy … believed that instead of killing her, the Agromonds are planning to usurp her Pow
ers … Stone’s Power directed by whoever has the strongest will …

  The strongest will … Jemma’s mind reeled through the ways Nox and Nocturna had controlled her. Not only had they drained her at the Ceremonies to make her believe she was weak and unwell, but they’d put her to work every weekday morning—cooking, cleaning, taking the family’s breakfasts to their rooms, feeding the horses, mucking out the stables. “All to keep me feeling like the underdog. Oh, Rattusses, how could I not have realized I wasn’t sickly, let alone deathly ill, when I was doing all that? How blind can you be!”

  Made you strong, though. Helped you survive now.

  “Yes. You’re right.” Strong as an ox, as Marsh had said. With growing resolve, Jemma scanned the final article, dated ten days later.

  SOLVAY POWERS WANING

  Skirmishes Break Out As Mist Spreads

  Centuries-long vendetta between the two ruling families … hopes of Anglavia coming back to a time of peace and prosperity dashed … fears that without the Solvays’ healing influence, the evil Agromonds will now prevail … Jemma’s Powers as well as their own demonic strength could give them everlasting supremacy …

  … Solvays suffering severe exhaustion … Bad enough when their son disappeared … they have now lost their only remaining child …

  Here, the page was torn off.

  “Only remaining child!” Jemma’s throat tightened. “Look, Rattusses: They had a son—I had a brother!” An older brother … but what had happened to him? Had her parents ever found him? Were they still weak, after all these years? Were they even alive?

  An insistent chirrup interrupted Jemma’s thoughts, and Sparrow fluttered around her hair, landing on her head just as Bryn appeared at the mouth of the cave.