The idea that I had given the fire anything made me feel sick to my stomach, but I forced myself not to let that interfere with the connection I’d established. Please.
Please.
Please.
“It’s working,” said Sparx. “It’s working. Ask it to do no more harm.”
No more. Please. No more.
“And that’s it! It will remain on this hill and take none of the buildings around us. Now, we need to get out of here. Quickly and quietly.”
“Huh?”
“I have some familiarity with your human authorities. I don’t think that you would much like the consequences of them finding you here in the heart of the flames.” The sound of wailing sirens punctuated his words.
I imagined trying to explain this to the firefighters, and the police, and Aaron, and my mom, and Oscar. Oh God.
And I thought I’d felt sick before … It was all too much. I could see nothing but flames, hear only the fire, smell smoke … I started to lose control again, to lose myself, and the fire burned brighter in response.
6
Red Haring
I STOOD IN the heart of the fire and the fire burned in my heart. We were one and the same. We would burn together until all the fuel ran out, and then we would burn out. And there was nothing I could do about it.
Or at least that was what I believed in the moment. But then I felt a sharp stinging pain in my lower leg, which snapped me out of the world of flame and returned me to the world of the flesh.
“What…” I glanced down and saw blood welling up from a set of short parallel slices across my shin and Sparx drawing back his right front paw in preparation for clawing me again. “Hey!” I leaped away from him.
“Good, you’re back.”
“What happened?”
“The fascination of fire, but we don’t have time to talk about it right now. We have to leave before the firemen get up here.”
“But where can we go?” I wailed.
Sparx said, “I don’t know. The fire trucks started unloading while you were gone. Is there any other way for a human to get off this hill? The ways I know won’t help you.”
I wanted to panic again, but I fought it down. Come on, Kalvan, think! Can’t go up … can’t go down. Left’s no good. Right? Right might work.
“Yeah, maybe; there’s this little ravine. Follow me.” I started forward, then stopped. We needed to go around the right side of the hill, but the fire had surrounded us completely.
“It’s all right. This fire is a part of you. It can only hurt you if you lose control of yourself again, and … BREATHE.”
Right. In. Out. In. Out. I stepped into the flames … and they didn’t burn me. Weirdest sensation EVER. I felt like I was walking through liquid light, or love mixed with rage, or … it seemed impossible to talk about it in words. I could feel heat, but it didn’t burn me. It just kind of let me know that it was there and a part of me … the worst impulse of my heart made into something real and almost solid.
All I knew for sure was that I never, ever wanted to feel it again.
We had just reached the edge of the fire when Sparx suddenly pressed himself against the side of my leg. “’Ware, the bitter-water boy is just ahead.”
“Huh?” But then I was looking down a steep slope into the little ravine with its tiny trickle of a stream that ran from a small spring near the top. And there was Josh, sitting on a rock with his toes in the water.
Josh looked up at me and smiled in a way that made my bones itch. “Pretty work there.” He jerked his chin at the fire behind me.
“I didn’t mean to do it!”
He shrugged. “It’s still beautiful, and a fancy bit of magic, even if you’re too precious a mama’s boy to own it.”
I bristled at that, but I didn’t dare let my temper get out of control there on the edge of the mess I’d made with it already. Breathe.
“You like fire?” Sparx asked Josh as we slid down into the ravine.
It was a nasty little drop, but the only way forward. I landed hard and twisted my left ankle, biting my lip to keep from crying out. I wasn’t going to let Josh see me that vulnerable.
Josh shook his head at Sparx. “Not really, but I can appreciate what it does, and I like the odds of this getting Kalvan so deep in trouble that they send him off to reform school.”
I kept on, silently talking to myself as I limped closer to Josh. In. Out. Getting pissed off is what put you here in the first place, Kalvan. Don’t make things worse. In. Out. A few moments later we were past him and moving up the ravine, away from the fire trucks.
I was just starting to relax when the streambed seemed to go as slick as black ice. I couldn’t adjust fast enough with my bad ankle and I fell again, landing hard on my hands and knees. Behind me, Josh laughed, and I knew without asking that he’d had something to do with my tumble. I forced myself to ignore the laughter as I dragged myself upright and continued on. I was limping badly now, but I kept moving, starting to pick bits of gravel out of my skinned palms as I went.
Sparx gave Josh a hard look but waited until we were out of sight to say anything more. “That one’s got a bad streak as wide as any river. I’ll be wanting to keep an eye on him when the seasons turn and the Crown with them.”
I nodded but didn’t say anything because the fire had left me feeling like I didn’t have a lot of room to criticize anybody else’s bad streaks. Somehow we got out of the ravine and the area, avoiding all the police and firefighters who had come to deal with my mess.
* * *
“What happened to you?” Dave had been on the back playground watching the fire with about half the school when I finally managed to work my way back to school. I’d caught his attention from the bushes and he came over as soon as he had a chance to slip past the teachers—easy enough given the distraction of the fire.
He continued now, “You’re filthy and you smell like smoke and … wait, you weren’t caught in the fire, were you? Because you’ll be grounded for a million years, and that’s after they suspend you.”
“I, uh, yeah, but it’s not like you’d think. Look, it’s a long story.”
Dave rolled his eyes. “Well, you’ll have to tell me later. After we get you cleaned up, that is.” He looked thoughtful. “The gym’s your best bet. You hide out close to the pass-through and I’ll run around and open up one of the windows.”
I nodded. “Thank you!”
The windows were huge and heavy, old-fashioned sash windows with the weights long since gone. They should have been replaced years ago, but so should a lot of things in the school. They were hard to lift and prone to slamming on fingers if you tried to get out that way. Not to mention they barely opened wide enough for someone my size to wiggle through.
Climbing over the window ledge with my skinned hands and bad ankle hurt so much I might have started crying if Dave hadn’t been there to see it. Sparx stayed quietly hidden in my backpack while Dave helped me climb the furniture to get into the showers, which was a small mercy. I still wasn’t quite ready to cross that bridge.
Getting the last of the gravel out of my palms and washing the cuts made me want to scream. When I got out of the shower I found Dave waiting.
“I snagged you a spare tee out of the gym’s loaner bin.” He handed me a green shirt with the school motto on it above a picture of Icarus—the Greek hero who had flown too close to the sun and melted his wax wings. It was a little ragged around the neckline, but it was clean. “I rinsed out your cargo shorts too. They might be a little uncomfortable while they’re drying, but they smelled like smoke something awful. Oh, and I found you some gauze for your palms.”
“Thank you.” I let Dave wrap my hands, then took the clothes and put them on along with my sandals, which squelched a bit from rinsing—I was super glad it wasn’t jeans-and-boots weather yet, because that would have been much more challenging. “I owe you big-time.”
“Do you?” I nodded. “Then talk to me, Kalvan.”
“What do you mean?”
Dave rolled his eyes. “You vanished right after advisory group this morning after barely saying hello. When I see you next you’re covered with soot. You’re bleeding and limping. And the whole hill behind the school is on fire. What the heck happened? Were you playing with matches? Because if that fire was your fault…”
“No. I…” I wanted to say the fire wasn’t my fault, but it totally was. “It’s complicated.”
Dave looked me straight in the eye. “I’ve got time.”
Apparently, rehearsal was over. “All right, come on.”
I scooped up my bag and we headed out into the main part of the gym. I figured it would be better if we were both sitting down for this. We climbed up to the top of the bleachers so we could duck between them in case anyone stuck their head into the gym.
But now that the moment had come, it felt even harder to get started than I’d feared. “It’s been a strange couple of days for me.”
“I’m listening.” Dave’s expression was closed and tight, completely lacking his usual infectious smile.
I took a deep breath. “I started the semester off thinking I was starting down the road my mom’s on.”
“Yeah, I saw a little bit of that when we skipped out of class last week, but you haven’t mentioned it since. So, are you?”
I started to feel sick again. “I … don’t think so. But honestly, I don’t know if I’d know, you know?”
Dave almost smiled. “It’s probably a good thing that you’re worried about it, but why didn’t you talk to me right away? You know I’ve got your back on that stuff.”
“It got really weird really fast.”
“How so?” Dave tilted his head to one side skeptically.
“It’s probably easier to show you.” I bent over and unzipped my backpack—hoping desperately that Dave would be able to see the hare. “Hey, Sparx, come on out of there.”
There was a long pause and Dave began to look really worried, but then my sort-of familiar poked his head out of the bag.
Dave jerked backward, almost falling off his seat. “Why do you have a giant rabbit in your bag?”
“Fire hare,” Sparx corrected. “Why does everybody get that wrong?”
This time, Dave did fall off his seat, sliding into the gap between his bench and the next one up. “Giant talking rabbit!”
“Yeah, that.” I leaned forward and offered Dave a hand up. “Welcome to my messed-up world.”
After several long moments where I was beginning to worry I’d just lost my best friend, Dave took my hand. “Complicated. Right. Tell me about it.”
So, I did, with the occasional interjection from Sparx. Dave mostly kept quiet, though he did ask a few clarifying questions about the thing under the capitol and the summoning.
When I was done, Dave let out a long, low whistle. “You can actually breathe fire?”
“Apparently.”
“I’d like to see that sometime.”
“No, you wouldn’t.” Sparx’s voice came out flat and hard. “It’s incredibly dangerous and it’s only luck that someone wasn’t seriously hurt. On top of that, he probably couldn’t replicate it if he tried, not anything like safely. It’s a discipline well beyond his training.”
“But I haven’t had any training,” I protested.
“Exactly!” Sparx turned and looked me in the eyes now. “I don’t know how long I’m stuck with you, but if it’s more than the next fifteen minutes we have got to get your powers under control. At the moment you’re basically a walking fireworks display waiting only for the wrong match. The next time you lose control, you could burn down your house.”
“I … oh.” I hadn’t had a chance to think about what I’d done beyond the immediate consequences until now. “I’m never going to breathe fire again, I promise.”
“Oh, good.” Sparx relaxed a little. “You’re going to be sensible about this. But be careful with your words. It may be that someday it will come to a choice between letting the fire out or letting it devour you from within.”
That sounded particularly awful. “All right, what do I need to do?”
“Learn control.” Sparx sighed. “And, thanks to Fate or Luck, I’m the one who’s going to have to teach you. Go, me.”
“Good luck with that,” said Dave. “He’s kind of a handful. Two or three, really.”
I gave him the stink eye. “Gosh, thanks, friend. I’m glad you’re here for me.”
“I really am,” said Dave. “Well, assuming this isn’t me having a break with reality, anyway.” He laughed, not entirely happily. “I can see why you were reluctant to talk about all this, especially if there was a real chance I wouldn’t be able to see Mr. Bunn here.”
“Mr. Bunn?!” Sparx reared back onto his hind legs. “Mr. Bunn?!”
“Oh, chill out,” I said, then turned back to Dave, leaving Sparx to glare at my back. “Yeah, that would have been gangs of fun.”
Dave smiled. “But it didn’t happen that way, and I’m going to roll with the whole magic thing for now because that’s a much happier option than the one where I’ve cracked up and this is all happening in my head. If it really is the latter, don’t tell me about it for at least a few days, okay?”
“Deal, but no worries. It’s all real.”
Dave chuckled. “Yeah, no offense, but you’re not a reliable witness on this one. It’s your imagination he’s a figment of.”
“I am not a figment,” said Sparx. “No butterfly wings, no antlers, and my ears are way too short. What are they teaching you children in school these days?”
“Is he serious?” Dave jerked his chin at Sparx.
“Sometimes, but it’s really hard to tell when he is and when he isn’t.”
Sparx looked puzzled. “Figments? Aligned with air? Look like a flying version of those jackalope things you people invented?” He held up his paws like a pair of antlers. “No? You’ve really never heard of them?”
“See?” I said. “I can never tell when he’s making stuff up to mess with me.”
* * *
Evelyn stepped to the front of the stage. “All right, today we’re going to do something a little more challenging.”
I elbowed my bag as it moved on the seat beside me—it had become almost a reflex over the last few days. It was dark in the big theater and nobody was likely to notice a backpack that refused to hold still, but I reeeeeally didn’t want to have to explain a magic hare to … well, anybody.
Evelyn continued, “We’ve been focusing on improv while you were all getting comfortable with each other.”
It was third period and Evelyn’s advanced theater class, which drew students from all six of the upper grades, and you had to have special permission from her to get in. Dave and I were the only seventh graders, and there was just one eighth grader—a girl named Devi who had transferred in from the arts magnet late in the previous year. Josh was in the class as well, and sitting a few rows behind me, which made me feel like I had a target on the back of my neck.
Evelyn clapped her hands, recentering my attention on the stage. “Now that we all know each other, I want to try something hard. At the end of the first week of class, I gave each of you a short piece from a classical play and asked you to read and familiarize yourself with it. I’m sure you’ve all done the homework, and I’d guess some of you even memorized your pieces.”
Beside me, I noticed Dave nodding and I winced. I’d read mine a couple of times, but then Sparx happened and I got distracted. Now I wasn’t even sure if I had it with me. As Evelyn continued I surreptitiously leaned over my bag and unzipped the top.
“Today we’re going to perform them for the first time,” said Evelyn. “These are really hard pieces, and I don’t expect you to get them right the first time. This is all about learning to work with tough language and someone else’s words. Dave, you’re up first. We’re going to work our way up through the grades on this go-round, though we’ll change that up as
the semester goes along.”
That meant I was second! Sweat broke out on my forehead as Dave headed for the stage. I was going to bomb this badly. I leaned into my bag and whispered, “I don’t suppose you can see a sheet with a speech on it in there anywhere.”
“Here.” Sparx kept his voice low as well, and a single crumpled piece of paper emerged a moment later, and I was so grateful I barely thought about the issue of someone noticing. “Henry V, great play.”
“You know it?”
“Oh yeah, I love Shakespeare. Great writer. Nice man, too.”
“Can you help me out?”
On the stage, Dave was beginning his speech, something from Oscar Wilde.
“How?”
“I don’t know…” I’d have said more, but I noticed Evelyn giving me the stink eye and subsided.
A few minutes later, it was my turn. I hadn’t heard a word of Dave’s piece, or of Evelyn’s comments about it, and I felt a little guilty about that. But then she called on me and all I felt was panic. As nonchalantly as possible, I hooked my backpack over one shoulder, leaving the top partially unzipped. Normally, I’d have left it behind for something like this, but A) I couldn’t go more than thirty feet from it without bad things happening, and B) I was hoping that Sparx could somehow help me with the speech, even if I couldn’t think of any way that would work.
As I passed the seat where my mentor, Aleta, was sitting, she gave me a gentle punch on the shoulder. “You’ve got this, Kal.”
No. I don’t got this. I’d never felt sicker getting up on a stage, and my shins started to itch like mad—my normal reaction to stage fright.
Right. I was soooooo doomed.
I uncrumpled the piece of paper and, hands shaking, began to read. “King Henry V, Act III, Scene I, France. Before … Harfleur…” My voice broke, and I heard Josh’s nasty little chuckle from the audience. Sweat started rolling down my temples.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Oh my god, was I going to bomb this. I could barely understand what I was reading, much less get it out with any emphasis.
Magic, Madness, and Mischief Page 7