The Fire Children

by Lauren Roy

  With as much dignity as she could muster, she returned to where she’d left Aunt Mouse’s quilt, wrapped herself in it, and stretched out along the cave floor. “Wake me up when you get tired,” she said, thinking of how the guards on Kaladim’s towers planned their watches. “I can keep an eye out so you can sleep, too.”

  “I don’t need to sleep.” Ember settled down near her, close enough that she didn’t need the quilt for warmth. She sat up long enough to fold it into a makeshift pillow, then lay back down.

  “What will you do all night?”

  “I’ll keep watch. I’ll make a plan. If I get bored, there are plenty of stories right here.” He gestured at the food she’d brought with her. “I’ll stay close so you don’t get cold.” Then he leaned in, extinguishing his flames just long enough to drop a kiss on her forehead, right where Vedra had only the night before. Where the witch-woman’s kiss had burned like a brand, Ember’s was only a rush of warmth, one that spread out and settled over her like a blanket. The light came back and he turned away, giving her what little privacy he could in the small space.

  She fell asleep to the crackle of his flames.

  THE THROB IN her fingers pulled her from a dream of being chased by the witch-women. She remembered only bits of it—knowing Ember was somewhere ahead of her, trying to head them off before they found him. There’d been a rooftop, only this time when she leapt from one to the other, she didn’t make it. She’d thrown her hands out before her as she fell, to stop the ground from rushing up. She must have done it here, too, and smacked the burns against the stone.

  Yulla sat up, sticking her aching fingers into her mouth. The fear from the dream leached away, and as the sweat that had broken out from it cooled, she realized she was alone in the cave. It was dark, now, and chilly. Sometime in the night, Ember must have left their shelter. The quilt was wrapped around her—it fell to her waist as she rose. He’d placed a loaf of bread beneath her head to serve as a pillow.

  That revelation kept her from worrying too much: if he’d had time to do those things, it meant he hadn’t left because the witch-women had found them. If she closed her eyes and listened, she could hear the faint sound of him moving about outside. He was humming the versam.

  She took advantage of the empty cave, creeping to the spring in the back to wash her face and hands. She felt better, but after the last couple of days’ exertions, she was sure she could use a good soaking. I don’t have that luxury. The best she could do was a scrubbing, but if Ember came in...

  Yulla scurried to the cave’s mouth and pulled back the horse blanket. Mother Sun and Sister Moon were low in the sky, telling her it was only an hour or so past dawn. The night’s chill had deepened, and she didn’t think the day would bring much warmth. Off to her left, she caught Ember’s glow. He was on the far side of the cave, blocked from Kaladim’s view by its walls. “Ember?”

  The humming stopped. “Don’t come out yet. I have something for you, but it’s not finished.”

  Curiosity made her want to peek around to see what it was. No matter how well Abba hid presents, Yulla always found them before her birthday. She’d never been good at surprises. But she knew she must smell of sour sweat and unwashed clothes. Doing something about that was a little more important than getting an early peek at whatever he had. “Good. Don’t come in.”

  There wasn’t much she could do for her clothes; the tiny spring was too small to wring them out in. The best she could do was strip down to nothing and air them out while she washed. She’d taken a bottle of olive oil and a bowl of sugar from that last house, and mixed them together now to make a scrub. There wasn’t much of it, so she used it sparingly as she could. Still, she felt worlds better as she scraped away the dust and sweat with the dull edge of a cheese knife.

  She wetted a corner of the quilt and wiped off the oil, then finger combed her hair while she dried. Once she’d worked out the worst of the knots, she plaited it, weaving a few sprigs of lavender into the braid. She was relieved to find her clothes more dusty than anything else; she’d still need a change as soon as she could, but they didn’t reek of sweat, or at least, not overwhelmingly so. It was a small victory.

  There was a palmful or so of sugar left in the bottom of the bowl. Yulla took it with her, along with the figs, and brought them to the cave’s mouth. “Ember? Is it safe to come out?”

  “It is.” The curtain twitched, and he held it aside for her as she stepped out into the desert morning. He looked quite pleased with himself, leading her around to the far side of the cave. Now and again, she caught him sneaking glances at her and had to hide pleased grins of her own.

  “I have dried figs,” said Yulla. She broke one in half and dipped the gooey side into the sugar, then held it out to him. “Will you try one?”

  He took it from her carefully, ignoring the scowl he earned when he extinguished his arm to do so. It sizzled in his palm, the sugar melting and browning and boiling before it caught fire. The fig shriveled and blackened. “It’s good,” he said.

  Yulla pressed her half against the side of the bowl, making the granules scritch against the side, and popped it into her mouth. She kept her happy noises to a minimum, but couldn’t hold them back completely. The first time Kell had introduced her to the magic that was sugar-dipped figs, she and Yulla had rolled them around in it until the little fruits were completely covered in tiny brown grains. They’d nibble off a piece, then re-coat the exposed flesh before the next bite. By the time Amma caught them, half the sugar bowl was empty and both girls’ teeth ached.

  Yulla had learned more restraint in the intervening years, but only barely. If Ember weren’t here, watching, she couldn’t guarantee she wouldn’t revert to her old ways.

  But he was here, and leading her to a surprise. The need to know what it was pushed that sugar lust to the back of her mind.

  “Here.” Ember pointed her to a waist-high boulder that leaned up against the cave wall. “Look behind it.”

  Setting the figs and bowl atop the rock, Yulla peered around it. She withdrew a sturdy piece of glass, about the size of the book of stories Abba read to them from. The edges were smooth and rounded. The surface was mostly flat, except for a few lumps and some bubbles trapped inside. The glass wasn’t clear like a windowpane, but smoky gray.

  “Ember, this is beautiful. Where did you find it?” She looked at him through it, and found she didn’t have to squint against his brightness.

  “I made it.”

  Behind him was a round indentation in the desert sand. The light from Mother Sun and Sister Moon glowed dully in its surface, like they might from a cloudy puddle. In fact, Yulla had to step closer to it to be sure it wasn’t merely a puddle, newly sprung from the ground. But no, it was more glass, like what she held in her hand... or like a bigger version of those molten footprints he’d left on his way to the cave.

  “Look through it,” he said. “And up. At my mother.”

  “We can’t look directly at Mother Sun. Not even when she’s mostly hidden. We’d—I’d—go blind.” Every child in the city knew that caution, taught to them from the lips of the priests and from their own parents. It wasn’t to make them fear the gods; it was simple common sense. Your eyes could burn the same as your skin. Worse than.

  Then she thought about the Worship Hall, how they looked through the Sunglass to know when it was noon up above. Did something in that pane protect the priests’ sight? Was it anything like what Ember had made for her?

  “It will be all right,” he said. “I promise. I want you to see them.”

  Yulla steadied her hands and held the piece of glass up to the sky. Mother Sun and Sister Moon had climbed higher in the sky since she’d awoken, and when she peered at them through Ember’s gift, her breath caught.

  Sister Moon was the same black disk against Mother Sun as she’d been since Yulla surfaced, but now Yulla could see the long filaments waving off of Mother Sun and out into the dark. Through Ember’s glass they appeared sil
very, like an old woman’s hair streaming in the wind. They changed as she watched, some lengthening, others breaking off and melting away, still others collapsing back into the ring of white that made up Mother Sun’s body.

  “I don’t even know how to say thank you for this,” she said. The glass was heavy in her hands, but she didn’t want to put it down, not just yet. “I bet I’m the only person who’s ever seen anything like this, aren’t I? I mean, aside from what the priests see below?”

  “I can only think of one other.”

  Now she did lower the glass. “Who?”

  “Sister Moon.”

  “How is that... She’s a goddess. She’s looking at Mother Sun’s face right now. Why would she need this?”

  Ember stepped closer to her and turned to follow Yulla’s gaze. “It was another world. Another sun. Father Sun, this time. I suppose that would make him my grandfather. And Sister Moon was a girl like you, who lived in a city like Kaladim. She snuck out of their cellars to see my mother and her siblings.”

  “And she met Mother Sun?”

  “Yes. They became friends, and when it was time for my mother to come here and take care of a world of her own, Sister Moon came with her.”

  “But she was a girl first. Like me.”

  Now he turned away from the sky and looked down at Yulla. “Like you.”

  What was it like, she wondered, to leave behind everything you knew, everyone you loved, and start a new life far away? So far you could never go back? So changed you could never go back? Sister Moon certainly wasn’t a girl anymore—had the transformation hurt? Did she still remember her old life? Did she miss it?

  Yulla thought of how it would feel, abandoning not just her town, not just her family, but her whole world. When she was little—especially on days Kell was being cruel or when she’d wound up on Amma’s bad side—she’d pretend the Brigand Queen would come riding out of the desert and claim Yulla as her true daughter. That she’d hidden her with Amma and Abba as a baby to keep her safe from the Scourge of the Seven Sands. Then the Brigand Queen would take her away, out to her hidden lair, and Yulla would claim her true place as one of the Companions.

  But those fantasies had always ended, often by Amma’s calling her to dinner, or Kell knocking on her door with an apology. Over the years they’d grown more infrequent. She was happy with what she had. Even if the Brigand Queen had come to take her away, she could have ridden home to visit. What Sister Moon did...

  Don’t ask me to do the same, she thought, though she didn’t dare say it. In some of Abba’s stories, you got three chances to change your mind. In others, you only got the one. For all that they’d danced and kissed and saved each other’s lives in the span of a day, it had only been a day. She didn’t know him well enough to know if he’d make the offer again should she refuse.

  She didn’t think she could say yes, but neither was she sure she wanted to say no. Don’t ask, she thought again, not yet. We have work to do first.

  He held her gaze a while longer, but didn’t ask. Whether it was because he’d understood what was in her expression, or because that was when the first starling flew overhead, she didn’t know.

  THE BIRD WHEELED so low and close Yulla could see the oily rainbow colors of the feathers on its belly. “That’s her!” she hissed. “That’s the pale-haired witch. Or part of her.”

  The starling had seen them; Ember was hard to miss, his glow standing out against the grey dawn. It cried out as it winged back toward Kaladim, and other birds took up the call.

  Beside her, Ember made a noise like a log shifting in a fireplace.

  The starling burst into flame. It flapped on for a few seconds, like a tiny phoenix rising into the sky, then it faltered and plummeted to the sand. In the distance, the others screamed their outrage.

  “I guess killing one doesn’t kill the rest,” Ember said. He sounded almost disappointed at the discovery. It surprised her for a moment—he was otherwise so very gentle. But then Yulla remembered his sister’s cries of pain as the witch-women dragged her along the day before, and she realized he must have heard the others as they were stolen away, too. As uneasy as it made her, she understood.

  “We might be able to circle around to the western gate.” The road dipped low on that side of the city. If they could get to it, they could use it as cover. Of course, that would require hiding his glow as they crossed the open sands. “Can you keep the blankets from catching for a while?”

  Ember’s eyes didn’t leave the southern wall of the city as he nodded. “Get what you need out of the cave. The sooner we set off, the better.” He followed her to the entrance, pulling the horse blankets down.

  Yulla ducked inside, tallying up what she’d need to take with her. Not much, really: the quilt, enough food to shove in her pockets, Abba’s canteen. She took the pot of honey for her still-aching fingers. If they made it back to town, she could probably trade it for a pot of actual salve and some linen for a wrap, but better this than nothing.

  She tore into a piece of flatbread as she tied up her bundle, and took one last drink from the spring. When she emerged, Ember had draped the blankets over himself. Small sections of thread smoldered, especially where the cloth touched his skin, but she didn’t think he’d be visible from a distance. He’d covered his head, too, his eyes peering out at her from beneath the cowl.

  “I killed another one,” he said. “I got it before it saw me.”

  That might have given them away faster than letting the bird fly all the way back. If the pale-haired witch had felt it die… We have to get out of here. Fast. “Follow me. We need to stay low, but I think I can find some cover for us on the way.” It wouldn’t be much, but she knew where the dunes and drifts were. There was another reason for approaching the city from the west as well. “The Wind is strongest just outside the gates there. Abba said it has something to do with the way the walls are built. If you can get her attention anywhere, it’ll be there.”

  She led them farther out into the desert, making a wide arc before she angled back to where they’d meet the road. They scuttled along like the shy spiny-tailed lizards that lived out here, darting from rock to rock, afraid of being seen. Yulla and Ember bent low to the ground, pausing every so often to check the skies for starlings. Perhaps Ember igniting that second bird had been enough of a warning to the pale-haired witch that she hadn’t sent any others. Or perhaps she and her sisters were trying a different approach.

  The end of the horse blanket dragged behind Ember like the train of a priest’s cloak, wiping out their footprints. Or, more truly, wiping away Yulla’s and pulling sand over the lumps of near-glass Ember left in his wake. She hoped it had hidden their trail enough that if the witch-women looked for tracks, they wouldn’t find them right away.

  It grew quiet enough that Yulla almost wished she’d spot another bird, so she could keep track of where the witch-women were. They made it to the road without further incident. Though her thighs burned from trekking through the sands, she walked parallel to the road rather than straight down it. As Kaladim’s western gate loomed larger and larger, Yulla scanned the tower and the tops of the walls for figures. Still nothing moved. Please let them be looking for us by the cave. Please don’t let them have seen us leaving.

  She’d always thought of the western gate as the prettiest way into the city. Twin rows of acacia trees lined the road, their branches growing towards each other and meeting in the middle. Travellers entered the city in their shade; those leaving had a few moments’ respite before they were released into the brunt of the desert sun.

  Ribbons were wound around the trunks all through the year, their colors changing with the seasons and the festival days. People wrote wishes on scraps of paper, folded them, soaked them in salted water, and tucked them by a sodden corner into the ribbons. When Mother Sun dried the paper out, the wind would carry the wishes away across the sands.

  For the first time, Yulla wondered what that meant, that one of their oldest
rituals called on not only Mother Sun, but on the Wind and Father Sea as well.

  The ribbons were dark spirals around the acacias’ trunks. Yulla knew they were bright crimson—she’d helped wind some of them, scampering up into the higher branches to secure them. “You never burn them,” she said as Ember slowed to a stop beside her. “They’ve been growing together for so many years, and Aunt Mouse says she always expects them to be gone when she comes back above. But they never are.”

  He must have heard the why she left unasked, because he smiled, and glanced up at where his mother and aunt soared far above. “Because Sister Moon loves them. She’s why they were planted in the first place. It was a long time before I was born.”

  “She worked through a priestess to grow them.” Yulla had heard the stories, of a woman who awoke from a dream and went out into the desert with only a skin of water and the clothes on her back. She was gone from full moon to full moon, and returned to Kaladim cradling the first of the saplings in her arms. Her hair had gone white in the month she was gone and she never spoke again, but for the rest of her life had tended to the trees.

  “Yes. And the ritual with the ribbons, that came from her as well.” He stepped onto the road, shedding the horse blanket cloak as he went. For a moment, he was a bright silhouette against the acacias, his glow spreading to the branches and lighting them from below. The ribbons stirred as his heat made the cold air move around them. “Will you bring me a piece of bark?”

  Setting down Aunt Mouse’s laden quilt, Yulla crept past him, found a loose piece on one of the trunks, and pulled it free. When she brought it back to him, Ember cradled it in his palm, keeping the dry wood from igniting. He touched his fingertip to it and burned symbols into the pale inner surface. “Your water,” he said, pointing at Abba’s canteen slung low on her hip. “Will you pour a little on it?”