by S. M. Beiko
“Fire is hot. The sky is blue. The sooner you open your eyes and accept things as they are, the easier it will be.”
“Is being incinerated really that easy?” I shouted back over the roar of the blaze, shielding my face with my hands and less than thrilled to die a second time in as many days.
I felt a hand on mine. It was cool and bright, and it pulled mine away from my face. Sil, or whatever it was she had transformed into, was pulling me back towards her looming shape in the middle of the room, guiding me with her human eyes. She was something older than me that knew what it was doing, so I put my trust in her. As soon as I did, the flames calmed and the heat fell away, but they still burned around us in a ring of fire.
I pulled myself back into a sitting position, shaking and watchful of the fire in case it got out of control again. But it seemed to have a mind of its own, leaping back and forth in playful coronas. The only difference was that it was now low and quiet, and I had the detached sense that it couldn’t hurt me now.
“And it won’t, if you trust it,” Sil reassured me, even though I hadn’t said a thing. “The fire is part of a Fox. It cannot be harmed by it.”
“Well, lucky you,” I said, looking back at her. But something strange was happening. She was still a fox, and still the fire spirit — an Ifrit, the Moth Queen had called her — ablaze and half-human and enormous. She was both at once, two shimmering images, watching me intently. I covered my left eye, the spirit eye, and she was the Fox. I covered the right, she was the Ifrit. Strangest of all, there was no pain in my head. Just warmth.
“Wait.” I rewound the conversation. “You said fire can’t harm a Fox.”
Even the Ifrit grinned. “Did I?”
I glanced automatically down into the black unholy mirror of granite. I covered my right eye. Where I sat was another Fox, staring back at me. I blinked, and it was gone.
“That’s . . . unexpected.” I swallowed. “So, what, I’m . . . I’m a Fox? Like you?”
Her face didn’t move. “The cold has always been a trial for you, here in the iciest of climes, but you are never broken by it. And you’ve never been burned, either, even when you touched every single candle on your fifth birthday cake.”
I remembered that. My aunt’s friends had shouted as though I’d done something wrong, as though it suddenly wasn’t my birthday anymore. But I’d been used to it. My mother had been letting me touch fire since I first saw it, because I loved it and wanted to be closer to it. I’d forgotten all of that, and the memory made my chest quake.
“You know way more than I thought you would,” I said, peering hard into the floor, even though my reflection didn’t change again.
“Your grandmother was a Fox, and a powerful one. This room was her summoning chamber. Your mother was a Fox, too, but things moved too fast and you were marked too soon for any of it to be told to you properly.” Her words grew heavier with the next breath. “And both were long gone before it could be made right.”
Marked. The Moth Queen had said that first. “Marked? For what? To die? And my parents, is this why they died? Because of . . . me?” In my darkest times of thinking about them, I blamed myself for their departures. It made my whole body hurt to think I was right.
The flames pulsed, and without knowing why, I felt like they were suddenly sorrowful. In this place, it didn’t shock me that fire could feel. “Your parents died, Roan Harken, because they wanted to change something beyond them, to protect you and others like you. They did not know that it would result in your death anyway, that their sacrifice was in vain.”
“But I lived!” I shouted, tears pricking my eyes. “I lived and I don’t even know why it’s important! Why I’m so important. Because I’m not! I’m just another body in a classroom, trying to pass my Provincials and be normal. Normal, for god’s sake! This is pretty much the opposite of that.” Phae’s face suddenly flickered across my mind. My only ally, and even she felt further away from me the more this story developed. She and Deidre and Arnas were what kept me tethered to the world, to the normalcy I craved. And they kept me from looking sideways at the Assiniboine and wondering why it called to me, like it did to my parents.
“You said their sacrifice,” I muttered, digging the heels of my hands into my eyes to stop the tears. “Like they had a plan.”
After a long pause, and a silence that even kept the flames down, Sil said, “Yes. They had a plan. But they failed.”
The form of her as a Fox and a flame goddess wavered like a mirage, but both sets of eyes were determinedly locked with mine.
“I want to understand,” I said finally. “I need to.”
“Then it’s time.” Her long arm, alternating crimson and white and blue, like changing fire, extended out. I heard one of the room’s shelves rattle, and suddenly a drawer opened, ejecting something towards us. I dove out of the way as a glinting dagger landed home on the edge of the silver circle that Sil occupied.
“A little warning!” I cried, feeling like a puffed-up cat spooked off a fence. I reached for the black hilt but reconsidered. The blade wasn’t steel like I thought, but blood-purple glass. Garnet. “I bet this is for something unpleasant.”
As usual, Sil ignored me. “I’m going to show you what you need, but to do that, I need to take you elsewhere. If you are going to spirit-walk at my side, you have to give something to the fire first.”
I swallowed. “Um. Like a finger?”
The Ifrit cocked her head, the Fox’s mannerisms breaking through the serenity of her blazing glory. “You’ll need all those, I’m afraid, however powerful a gift it might be. And you’ve already given your eye to the Moth Queen. I was thinking your hair would do it.”
“My . . . ?” I gathered it all up in my hand at cheek level. It reached my waist, and I didn’t care for it or style it or pay too much attention to it. It was always tied back and stuffed under a bike helmet, so why bother? But it was one of those things that reminded me of my mother, or the idea of her, and it felt like another limb that I just couldn’t part with.
But it was that or nothing. I picked up the garnet blade, which was at least a foot long, and so sharp it sang against my fingernail when I plucked it. I guess the importance of my hair paled to finding out the truth. “All of it?”
“As much as you can. Forget your vanity. It will grow back, and it is more powerful severed.”
Severed. I steeled myself, slipped the blade under my hair at the base of my skull, and sawed. The hair whispered onto the floor. I gathered it up in a fist and held it up to Sil.
“Not to me,” she said, holding up a glowing hand and flicking her head towards the fire surrounding us. It had risen like a hungry animal sniffing the air, tongues of flame pointing to me.
“But how — ?” I looked back at Sil, but her entire body was expanding, flickering into only fire with human eyes in the heart of it. Her body flames were leaving the inner circle and joining the flames that ringed the room. They seemed to be undulating faster than before, larger, hotter. I tried to calm myself as I had earlier and got to my shaking feet. I caught a glimpse of myself underneath me, head already lighter despite the poor hairstylist I’d turned out to be.
I looked scared. And I was. But I’d come this far, and I wasn’t about to make another break for it. After all, Foxes don’t run.
I turned my attention back to the flames, which were gathering strength and closing in on me. Fire cannot hurt a Fox, and since I apparently was one, I was safe. I hoped. I bunched the hair in both of my hands, and entered the silver circle. I hesitated, and then conjured up all the courage I had, wincing my eyes shut and holding the hair above me.
“Here,” I shouted over the blaze, and the fire consumed me, taking my body and bones apart until there was nothing left.
*
But a body is just a shell, after all. And there was something left. Something that still allowed
me to perceive, to know, and to imagine that I was moving. At first it felt like I was swimming through quicksand, like my limbs had been reprogrammed (if I still had limbs; at this point, I couldn’t tell). All was darkness, but it was warm, and I hovered. Or maybe I walked. And beside me walked Sil. Beside me, or through me, or a part of me? Something else may have been carrying us, too, so I eased into the warmth I had become and let things change around me.
Everything went from darkness to brilliance, and Sil’s voice was inside me.
“You’re doing better than I thought,” she said. “You’re spirit-walking now.”
Walking, I thought. More like floating.
“In a way,” Sil said. It seemed all I could do was think instead of speak, mouthless as I was, but maybe that was enough. And maybe it was about time I shut up, anyway. “It is your spirit and not your body that exists here. They are two very different entities.”
My spirit. Am I dead again? Where are we?
We were surrounded by the fire, though the form of it kept changing, trying to settle into recognizable shapes. As uncertain of the next step as I was, I felt as though it was waiting for me to tell it what to become.
“We are on a different plane. A place that will show you what I can’t on my own.” The fire flickered in approval, more and more alive the farther we moved with it.
So the fire’s going to let me in on whatever you’ve been half prophesying all this time? Next time I’ll just light a match.
“You’re learning quickly,” she said, a smile in the voice that rattled through my being. “But don’t get ahead of yourself, because we need to go back before we can move forward.”
Back? I asked. How far back?
“To the beginning,” said Sil, her voice rocketing through the top of my soul and out into the fire, which assembled itself into what could have been a fire-painting of the world, rippling beneath us.
I could feel a creation myth coming.
“Myth and reality are two separate planes joined at the heart,” Sil said. “They are the same thing for those of us who know them well, those of us who were born from them. Myths are dreams, and all things were born from a dream. Can you accept this?”
I guess I’ll have to, I conceded. In the last two days, I’d seen so many embers of the world she was about to show me echoing into mine — the Moth Queen, the bloody rabbits, and Sil herself. I knew I would have to go beyond the limitations of my lizard brain and let it all in.
“Yes,” she said in response to my silent musings, and as she continued, the flames danced and changed to illustrate her story. “The world was dreamed into being and kept by the collective consciousness of all those who passed before. We call this consciousness Ancient, for it is the spirit of the universe, and it is older than all of us.
“Ancient is the ember from which life sparks, and as each life ends, so it returns to Ancient. And the cycle continues. Ancient exists in all of us, from the smallest stone to the eldest mountain. And there are those of us whom Ancient has touched and allowed to see beyond the physical world and into the spiritual, into the realm of Ancient called the Veil. It is from the Veil that my power comes, and that yours will, too, in time.”
That made my spirit body trill. Really? I’ll be able to light up like a powder keg and take on Death?
Sil scoffed, “Not exactly. Animals and spirits and demons inhabited the world before man was even an inkling in Ancient’s consciousness, and five creatures kept Ancient’s peace: the Seal, the Deer, the Owl, the Rabbit, and the Fox. Each embodied an aspect of the world that kept it spinning on its axis: the Seal for water, the Deer for spirit, the Owl for air, the Rabbit for earth, and the Fox —”
For fire. The sun in the fire painting flashed like a medallion, a fox face emerged on its surface before it winked and vanished.
“Yes. The world grew and life exploded within it, and the Five maintained the balance. But there were darklings, too, the destructive aspects of Ancient that existed to keep the cycle turning, and they drew from Ancient one of its greatest dreams — a being that was a combination of the Five. Humans.”
I saw indistinct figures climbing out of the earth, the enormous eyes of the five guardian animals watching them as they emerged. Knowing it was the will of the world that had brought them into being, the animals did what they could to allow Ancient’s greatest dream to prosper.
“But as time went on, humanity grew out of our sphere of control. Goaded by the darklings that had encouraged them into life, they ceased to believe that anyone was their master except themselves, and they placed the Earth under their yoke. And as their eyes clouded over they buried us, seeing us only as animals — base creatures and a threat to their power. They hunted us and did as they pleased, despite our efforts to guide and protect them.”
I saw Deer and Owls and Rabbits and Seals fleeing into the shadows of their world, but the Fox stayed where it was as an onslaught of men and women bore down on it. And then the Fox changed into one of them, and it went unharmed.
“We learned quickly that to protect this world, we would have to change with it. There are those of us who remained animal, who wanted to live simply and thus forsook the power that Ancient gave us. But those of us who still guard the Earth, who protect humanity despite its efforts to undo the fragile balance, we walk between these worlds. The Five Families live on, into today.”
Where? Among humans?
“Yes. Everywhere. We have power, but that power dwindles as each season passes. Because the Earth and Ancient, the power at its heart, has grown silent. Trees are destroyed, cities built, and what was sacred is now a commodity. This is the New Balance, off course with everything we were made from. And the power we once turned to for guidance is harder and harder to reach. And so it was when Zabor came into power.”
The Moth Queen mentioned that name, that thing . . . whatever it is. And that it was coming for me.
I saw an image of this creature flickering in the fire, which had turned black as oil. Red eyes cut through it like rubies, a heavy body pulsing in infinite coils.
“Zabor is a Celestial Darkling, a powerful demon that once tried to devour the earth. She is not like other darklings, many of which exist the world over with their own humble sort of machinations. Darklings themselves are not necessarily the opposite of my kind, as in the Veil there is no good or evil, only life and death. But they are the embodiment of the other side of creation, which is destruction. But the serpent called Zabor has her own vendetta against both man and the Ancient creatures that once fought her, called Denizens. She is always hungry and has razed the land over and over using the scythe of her tail.”
The tail shot out of the water, and the river rose in a tidal wave. I’d lived in Winnipeg long enough, endured enough winters, to know that the pervading fear of the whole city was the threat of the flood. And not just Winnipeg, but every town that grew out of the Red River Basin. It was pretty much what we were famous for, if widespread damage and destruction were worth bragging about. Lives were always claimed when a major flood happened, and beneath us, I saw Zabor swallowing every one of them.
“Members of the Five Families live all over the world, and here, in the Red River Valley, they live in fear. Long ago, Zabor made a pact with them that she would hold off the flood each year if the families were obedient and gave one of their offspring to her before the spring . . .”
What? Why would anyone agree to send their kids to the slaughter like that? Didn’t they try to fight back?
“They tried, but there are few of us left with enough power to stop her. And with each descendent of the Five Families devoured, Zabor grew more powerful. It seemed like the toll was the only way to truce. Each year that a flood occurred, it was because the parents of those children marked for sacrifice rebelled and would not go through with it.”
Marked . . . like me? I was marked for Zabor’s springtim
e snack?
The landscape changed, and I saw myself at my parents’ funeral. My father’s coffin sat next to an urn, whose contents were symbolic; Ravenna’s empty coffin had been cremated, a ritual of fire (and now I understood that). Their friends had all processed in with tokens and stories and pictures, lighting candles by a framed portrait of all three of us. We looked so happy suspended behind glass. A life just out of reach. My three-year-old self stayed behind a long while looking at them, wondering if the pictures would come to life and tell me it’d be all right, but the only thing that came to comfort me was a tiny yellow moth, the kind that loitered around our porch lights. It landed on my hands, shuddering dust before taking off again. I rubbed the tears out of my eyes, and I suddenly realized that’s when it all started. When my eye went wrong and everyone said it was a grief tic, it was really the marking of the moth burrowing into my skull, waiting.
I still don’t understand . . . why me? Is there a selection process? Did I do something wrong?
“The Moth Queen said it herself,” Sil replied, and I dug around in my memory for the harsh words from Death’s mouth: “It was the mother who interfered with the work, and there will be blood for blood . . .”
My mother? She interfered? But how?
There were so many images writhing around beneath us, but the flames were pulling back, dying out: Zabor, the black serpent; the flood she brought; the infinity of Earth; the Five Families that protected it . . . it was all melting away, and I felt as though I were falling through the abyss it left behind. My spirit clawed for purchase but I plummeted, Sil’s voice gone as I cried out for help. In the dark I saw the shadow of a red Volvo falling along with me, and waiting underneath it, the open jaws of the snake.
*
I came to with my face plastered into the granite, torso inside the silver circle, legs splayed beyond it. I felt almost as bad as when I woke up that morning, but I figured there was room to improve my spirit-to-body landing. Since I was having a hard time moving, I closed my eyes, concentrating on breathing and bringing my scattered thoughts together.