by Lauren Roy
“We touch Mother Sun,” he said, “and we see what she sees.” His flames dimmed, lowering the light all through the cave. It made his blue eyes seem so much brighter. He covered her hand with his own, and Yulla gasped.
She was looking at herself through Ember’s eyes. Dust dulled her hair, which was limp in some places and windblown and tousled in others. Dirt and soot streaked across her face, broken only by the smudges where she’d wiped sweat away during her flight from the witch-women. Her clothes were a mess, her fingernails filthy with dirt.
And yet.
Kell always told her she was a pretty kind of plain. Looking through Ember’s eyes, she couldn’t quite refute that, but there was something else there she couldn’t quite put a finger on. It was almost as if she were lit from another source of light, small and subtle, certainly not as bright as Ember’s, but there all the same. It made her seem alive, vital. Yulla was perfectly happy with what she saw in the mirror every morning. This light, whatever it was, made her lovely.
She reached up with her free hand, as if she were touching the face in the mirror. She saw her own dirt-caked fingernails come up—
And she snatched them away, hissing in pain. The vision snapped.
Ember let go of her hand. “Yulla, I’m sorry! I didn’t realize you would... Are you all right?” He held a hand out, as though he could help. In the end he let it drop into his lap. “I’m sorry.”
She stuck her singed fingertips in her mouth and sucked at them for a moment before she answered him. “It’s all right.” She showed him, and immediately wished she hadn’t: her saliva had only smeared the dirt around. “I’ve gotten worse helping Aunt Mouse in the kitchen.”
“It looks like it hurts.”
A small blister was forming about midway down on her middle finger, but she hadn’t lied when she told him she’d had worse. “Once, Aunt Mouse set a hot pan down on the table. I watched her do it, but when I wanted to put something else beside it a minute later, I wasn’t thinking. I tried moving it without a potholder.” It had been agony, even though she’d dropped the pan as soon as the pain registered, scattering dinner across the floor. For a week, she’d gone around with her whole hand wrapped in silk, the burnt parts smeared with salve. It had throbbed and throbbed. This was nothing next to that. “It’ll be all right. Watch.”
The water in Abba’s canteen was tepid, but it calmed her singed skin and washed away the worst of the dirt. She patted her fingers dry with a corner of Aunt Mouse’s quilt, and rummaged around in her pile of stolen foodstuffs until she found the pot of honey she’d swiped. Getting the lid off was awkward; she steadied the pot with her injured right hand and twisted with her left. It took a few tries, but soon enough she set it on the ground, dipped her fingers in, and gingerly rubbed a scoop of honey over her burns. What the water hadn’t cooled, the honey did.
“See?” She grinned. “Worlds better.”
Ember didn’t look convinced, but he nodded anyway.
Yulla sorted through the pile of food with her good hand until she found a persimmon that was just barely ripe. Kell made fun of her for it, but she liked the slightly bitter tang the fruit had when it was like this. Her teeth were about to break the skin when she remembered herself, and held it up so Ember could see. “Would you like any?”
“No.” He stared at her honeyed fingers. “How does putting food on that help?”
It hurt to flex them, but it would keep the burnt skin from stiffening too much. “Honestly? I don’t know. It’s a remedy Amma uses.” She bit into the persimmon, savoring the bitter and sweet mixing on her tongue. “You haven’t seen anyone do that before? When you’re watching us?”
“We don’t watch individuals, really. More like, we watch people as a whole. Towns, cities. The whole world.”
She tried imagining what that would be like, viewing the comings and goings of Kaladim from the top of the guard tower. You’d see the caravans travelling in and out of the gates, smell the bread baking as Hatal got his apprentices working before Mother Sun rose, see the merchants open their stalls at the market and the people crowd in. But there’d be no way to know that this person was buying herbs for a sick mother, or the conversation that family had around their dinner table. “So you only know us from a distance.”
“Until we come down here.”
“But even then, how well do you know us? You experience our things, but that’s not us. How much can a chair tell you? Or a picture?”
Ember scuttled forward and selected one of the pastries Yulla had set aside. It sat in the palm of his hand at first, a dollop of kumquat jam in the middle of its buttery, flaky crust. Then it ignited, the doughy part of it burning up, the jam melting and running before it, too, caught. The smell of burnt pastry and fruit made Yulla’s nose wrinkle. “I see the woman who made it rolling out the dough and painting it with melted butter. She folds it and rolls it again, then adds more butter. Over and over, until it’s just the way she wants it. I see her children helping her make the jam, and before that, the family at the market, buying the kumquats and the flour and the butter and the eggs.
“I see the grove of trees where the fruit was grown, the hand that picked it. I see the little girl who tends the chickens, how carefully she gathers the eggs from beneath the hens. I could tell you about the miller who made the flour, or the man who churned the butter.
“I can hear the songs the children sang while they waited for their pastries to bake, and I know who stole one from the cooling rack when their mother wasn’t watching.” His smile was both proud and shy. “But I’ve never been able to talk to any of them, or ask them questions.”
“What do you want to know?” She wasn’t a priestess or an elder, had done nothing in her life that all the other children in Kaladim hadn’t done as well. What could she tell Ember that wouldn’t bore him?
“Everything.”
FIRST, YULLA INSISTED on peeking into the back of the cave to see if the spring was still there. If she was going to answer his questions, she wanted to be composed. It was, and after a long drink from the tiny, shallow pool, she washed the dirt from her face, got the worst of it from under her fingernails, and did her best not to irritate her burns. By the time she was done, she felt closer to normal than she had all day.
She remembered being in the Worship Hall, sitting at the priestess’ feet with a cluster of other children her age. Lessons were held in the cool of the evening, after school was over and chores were done. Every priestess was different: one expected complete silence while she read aloud from her holy book; another made the children do the reading, and asked them to reword each passage in their own way. Some frowned on fidgeting, others took it as a hint of drifting minds and would change tactics to keep their class engaged.
Her favorite priestess would sit with them—among the children instead of on the steps above—and not say a word. The students asked whatever questions came to mind, and she answered them, letting them branch as far afield as they wished over the hour. No question was too silly, no leap of logic ever mocked.
She felt a little like that priestess now, as Ember asked her question after question after question.
The priestesses, of course, never had unkempt hair and two-day-old clothes, but Ember didn’t seem to mind. He hadn’t been joking when he’d said he wanted to know everything. She walked him through a day, and every sentence sparked a new slew of tangents: what did she see out her window when she woke up? What did Abba sound like? Amma? Aunt Mouse?
She felt only a teeny twinge of guilt for making her Kell-voice shrill.
What did she eat for breakfast? How was it cooked? How did it taste? They stopped to compare notes on a piece of hard cheese, Yulla nibbling at hers and closing her eyes, telling him about its saltiness, its sharpness, its crumbly texture on her tongue; Ember burning it in pebble-sized chunks, telling her about who made it.
He wanted to know what she studied at her lessons, what the light was like in the classroom in the morning
, at midday, in the afternoon. When she mentioned that Amma played her setar sometimes, after everyone was asleep, he asked if Yulla played an instrument. If they went back into the city, after they were safe, could she play a song on Abba’s flute?
He asked about stories, and she had to stop after two of the Brigand Queen’s tales and as much of Inkspot as she could remember without Abba’s book. Her throat was dry by then, and a peek outside told her Mother Sun and Sister Moon had set.
Then he asked about the versam.
“There’s a dance I’ve seen,” he said. “In the summer. Everyone’s in bright colors, and you’re all spinning around from one person to another.”
“The versam. When we’re sixteen, it’s considered the first of our in-between years. We’re not children anymore, but we’re not quite adults. I guess you could say we’re saying goodbye to childhood and hello to being grown-ups. Letting go and welcoming.” She thought of Kell, how she’d been this past year and a half: mercurial, moody.
“You start leaving things behind,” Yulla said, and for the first time, realized how hard that must be on Kell. She watched Yulla still doing the things Kell herself enjoyed, and yet she tried so very hard to act the way she thought the adults wanted her to, she’d given those things up.
“Will you show me how it goes?” Ember asked, pulling her out of her thoughts.
“I’m not sixteen for another year.”
It wasn’t a straight answer, and Ember didn’t let it pass. “You must know the steps, though. Either practicing yourself, or watching your sister.”
Yulla looked at herself again: wrinkled, dust-stained clothes, sandals whose straps were ready to give, not even a flower to tuck in her hair. “It loses something without the dress.”
“I can help with that.” Ember stood, dampening his flames again, and beckoned Yulla to her feet.
As she rose, multi-colored tongues of flame left Ember’s palms and surrounded her. No heat came off of them, but their light made shifting patterns on the cave wall. They shaped themselves into the bell of a skirt and closed around her waist. Yulla gave an experimental twirl, and the flames flared out just the way the silks did on the real versam dresses.
She took a few steps, and the skirt even swished like silk, brushing her ankles but not burning her. All right, then. She gauged the length of the cave and launched into the step-step-twirl pattern of the dance. She could do it twice before having to work her way back, and adjusted her gait to account for it. Up and back twice, fascinated by the way the hundreds of tiny flames moved with her. She hummed the melody as she went, lost in the dance.
Then Ember was with her, his flames tamped down to nothing at all. He caught her smoothly at the end of the twirl, and she slipped into the position as though they’d been practicing together for months. She’d walked through the steps with her friends before, and once or twice, her partner had even been a boy her age, but it had been nothing like this. Ember held her injured hand carefully, his touch feather-light.
With his flames dampened, his skin had cooled to a dark greyish brown. Yulla had admired what she’d seen when he was covered in fire, but now she couldn’t help but notice the lines of his jaw, the arch of his brows. She told herself the heat rising in her cheeks was from being this close to him—he was still as warm as a fever patient.
“You can dance,” she said, as he led her into another twirl and guided them toward the mouth of the cave. She winced inwardly. Of course he can, you idiot.
But Ember only looked pleased. “It looked like fun.”
He twirled her again, then they abandoned the pattern of the versam and simply danced around in slow circles. The skirt lost its shape as the flames that comprised it guttered out. A few stubborn ones floated up to hover around Yulla and Ember like fireflies. With his own fires out, they provided the only light in the cave.
Their shuffling steps slowed, too, though Yulla didn’t know whether she’d slowed them down or Ember had. They came to a stop, but neither let go of the other.
“Can I kiss you?” Ember’s voice was barely a whisper.
Yulla nodded, hoping he could see it in the dim light. Her burnt fingers throbbed with the slamming of her heart as Ember bent his head toward her. This is real, this is going to happen. She’d been kissed before, a couple of times. It was an odd relief to think she at least knew the how of it, to avoid the awkward bumbling about as you closed your eyes and tried to meet the other person halfway. Still, no one would ever believe this—she hardly believed it herself. Only the twinging of her burnt fingers assured her it wasn’t a dream.
Then she forgot all about the pain in her hand—she forgot all about everything—as he pressed his lips to hers.
KELL HAD RECENTLY acquired a taste for books that spoke of searing kisses and burning passions. Yulla, of course, swiped them from Kell’s bedside table as soon as she finished them. Never, in all the times she’d paused in her reading to imagine just what those kisses would feel like, had she pictured this.
Ember’s lips were soft yet firm. He tasted of sandalwood and acacia, and when they broke apart for a moment, his breath was hot on her cheek. Then they were kissing again, and though she was sure he could have seared her he didn’t. She ran her hands over his back, a small thrill going through her when it dawned that he was shirtless without his flames. His smooth skin cooled even under her touch to something more solid. In places it felt almost like bronze.
It clicked again that he was bare from the waist up. Curiosity demanded she know the rest; decorum and embarrassment kept her from being obvious about it. She hoped. She let her left hand drift down to his hip, where it seemed safest to go, and was relieved to find something like a waistband. Whether he’d conjured trousers or had been wearing them beneath the flames didn’t matter; she tucked those questions away for later and let herself get lost in the kisses awhile longer.
She trailed kisses along his jaw while he tangled his hands in her hair. In Kell’s books, the heroine’s hair was never dusty or dirty—or if it was, it was prettily so and never a problem. But Yulla hadn’t even thought to steal a comb while she pilfered that last family’s offerings, and now and again she felt the tug as Ember’s fingers caught on yet another knot. It didn’t deter him, though. When it happened he’d withdraw gently and cup her cheek, or trace a line from her shoulder to her elbow, and murmur an apology as he sought her lips once more.
The longer they kissed, the cooler Ember grew. His skin still yielded beneath her touch, but reluctantly. Then she found the spot just above his elbow, where a patch the size of a coin didn’t give when she pressed.
And it was spreading.
Yulla thought about what he’d said earlier, that it made him tired to dampen his flames. Something else came back to her too, what he’d said the witch-women would do to him and his brothers and sisters once they’d caught them. They’d put the Fire Children’s flames out, he’d thought, and if they succeeded...
... it would be agony.
Yulla shoved Ember away. “No, wait. Stop.”
He staggered backwards, surprised, and caught himself against the wall. “Yulla? Did I hurt you?” The last of the little flames winked out. Only his eyes glowed in the darkness.
She realized, too, how quickly the cave had cooled without Ember blazing away. While he’d held her, she’d been plenty warm. Now her arms broke out in gooseflesh. It almost made her want to step back into his embrace. Well, that, and how nice his kisses had been. She shook off the thought. “No. You’re hurting yourself. Bring your fire back. Now.”
“I’m all right. It doesn’t hurt that much.” There was a lie there, but not a cruel one. It was the kind of lie you told when you wanted more of a thing someone else wanted to take away:
I’m not tired, Abba, let me stay up for one more shooting star.
I’m not full, Amma, I saved room for dessert.
I’m not in pain, Yulla, let me kiss you again.
When she felt him reach for her she pulle
d away, letting that and her silence serve as her answer. A few heartbeats went by before she heard him lower his arms. “All right.” He sighed, and the rustling, match-flaring sound of it was lost in his own flames returning.
Yulla had to squint against the light. It seemed bright as daylight at first, after the scant glow of their dance. When she could see his face again, a maddening smile played around Ember’s lips. “What’s funny?”
“Nothing’s funny. It hurt, but it was worth it.”
Yulla ducked her head, trying to hide her own pleased grin. “Oh.”
“Did you... Did you like it?”
“I liked it very much.” She cringed at how awkward she must sound. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. We need you strong if we’re going to try talking to the Wind. If the witch-women are nearby, we’ll have to run again. I can’t be what makes you weak.” She found the courage to look at him, and saw how her words had stung. “If we fix this,” she said, casting about for something to soften it, “if we save the others, then maybe we can, um...”
He nodded, saving her from the mortification creeping in at the idea of finishing that sentence. “You should get some sleep. I’m not the only one who might have to run tomorrow.”
She struggled not to argue, not to tell the same kind of lie Ember had: I’m not tired; tell me more stories about you. But he was right. The wave of fatigue caught up to her, as though her body had suddenly tallied up all of the exertion and the fear of the day, factored in how she’d spent the last few minutes dancing with and then kissing one of the Fire Children, and decided no, that was quite enough, thank you. Yulla counted it a success that she didn’t yawn.