They traveled long into the night, trying to get as much distance as they could. They didn’t talk as they walked, giving Tarana an extended period of time to think about how they would survive. They had no supplies, no food, and she became increasingly aware of those two facts as the night grew much colder and her stomach churned, aching for food.
The mud grew hard beneath her boots, freezing under the pale moonlight. She had gotten rid of the ball of light as soon as they reached the bottom of the cliff as it only made them stand out and the moonlight easily lit their way. They passed very few trees. The only vegetation seemed to be small shrubs and prickly bushes that tore at her clothes when she carelessly swung an arm too near. Djerr stumbled in front of her and shook his head, apologizing quietly. She caught his arm and turned him toward her. “Maybe we should rest for a little bit,” she suggested.
He shrugged and looked around. “That ledge should give us some cover,” he said, pointing to a small drop in the landscape, half as tall as her. It’ll be hard to see us, unless someone’s right on top of us.” She nodded and they made their way over to it, leaping over some of the smaller bushes. They nestled down, leaning against the ledge and into each other. Both of their bodies shivered uncontrollably, their teeth chattering.
Tarana was silent for a moment, thinking. “There’s a lot of water in the ground, don’t you think?” she asked finally. Djerr’s eyes were closed, his head resting against the ledge behind him. “All that snow, it must have melted into the ground and now it’s frozen, but it’s still there,” she said to herself. “It used to be so foggy where I lived, everyone said it was because we lived by the lake. Sometimes you could even see the water droplets hanging in the air. I used to be reminded of that when the sun came out after the rain back in Kain. The mist would rise in the air, just hanging there above the rocks and the roofs.”
She lowered her hands to the ground and took a slow breath outwards, extending energy through the frozen mud. Invisible tendrils flowed from her fingertips, probing the ground. It was jagged and hard on the surface, almost painful, but as she dug deeper, she found it was still soft and malleable. Things lived under there - she felt the quiet vibrations of ants tunneling, slowly moving deeper in the soil.
Slowly, carefully, she kept extending her reach. With each slow breath outwards, she groped slightly further until she was trembling, unable to stretch farther. With another slow breath, she began sending out pulses of heat into the soil, warming it in all directions. It threaded its way upwards, gradually melting the thin layer of ice. Far removed from her body, Tarana vaguely felt the ground below her body begin to soften.
Stretching something inside of herself, she increased the heat and she felt the water in the ground begin to thread its way upward, slowly rising from the ground. Her reach began to slip back toward her body and with a small jerk, she sent a final burst of heat, then snapped back into her own body, slumping forward. She looked around her and saw mist rising from the ground in all directions. Putting her hand to the ground, she found it was warm and soft. With no idea how much time had passed, she glanced over at Djerr, who was watching her carefully.
“You did this?” he asked. When she nodded tiredly, he smiled. “You really are amazing, you know that?” She shrugged, too tired to talk and with a final effort, reached out in the same way to one of the bushes near them, sending it a sharp jolt of heat, enough to make it catch fire and keep them warm, the smoke hidden within the fog. She fell to her side, asleep before she hit the ground.
Her sleep was dreamless and when she opened her eyes to find herself in the cave, she had no sense of how long she had been asleep. With a small sigh, she closed her eyes again until she felt Rupert poking her side with his foot. Grumbling, she rolled over and slowly sat up, drawing her knees up to her chest and resting her chin on top. “I need sleep,” she mumbled, her eyes still half-closed.
“Nice work back there,” Rupert said briskly. “Using your surroundings to benefit you. Always a good idea. And I noticed you are starting to relax a little when you use your magic, although you’re still drawing out far more energy than is necessary. Do you have any idea how much fog you caused?” Tarana shook her head, yawning. “Well, you’ll find out today, when you start walking. A word of suggestion, use the magnetic field of the planet to keep your direction, since you will probably be walking through thick fog all day long.”
Tarana grinned a little and looked up at him. “Hey, that’s pretty impressive. Could you cause that much fog when you were my age?”
The deep-set wrinkles in his forehead grew a little deeper. “Tarana, do you not understand the cycle and flow of magic through the planet? I thought I made this clear. There is a certain amount of magic that is cycled through the planet and in the past, it was doled out to a couple hundred individuals. Some received more, some received less, but the total amount was always roughly the same.
“We buried that reserve of magic deep in the planet when the last of us died, and now that it has re-emerged, the entirety of that power has been endowed unto you. Now if you could only learn to control it a little better, you could take advantage of all that energy, but even as it stands now, the answer is no - there was no wizard in my lifetime who could cause that much fog that quickly, including myself.”
Her mouth dropping open, Tarana found herself waking up a bit more quickly. “Well why in the world did you wizards decide to give all that power to one person? What if the person had turned out to be really dumb or mean or something?”
Rupert shrugged. “It was a chance we had to take. You’ve heard the story of how we fell. We were too weak when we were apart, but people were too angry when we were together. The only solution we saw was if there was only one wizard who could take control and use his or her power to remain undefeated.”
“Well, I have no intention of taking control of anyone,” she said firmly and ignored his look. “I’ll learn how to use my magic, sure. But that’s it. I just want to be left alone after all this.”
Brushing back his straggly white hair, Rupert frowned deeply at her. “Well, fog aside, I thought our lesson today should deal with fire. It’s an extremely valuable resource, as I’m sure you’ll agree as you try to survive in the wilderness without a single blanket. There are certain precautions you can take to keep it from getting out of hand and tricks you can use to extend its lifespan.” He paused suddenly as he noticed her expression. She had drawn her knees closer to her chest, arms wrapped around them and her eyes had grown wide. “Is something the matter?”
“I don’t want to learn about this,” she said shortly.
Puzzled, he raised an eyebrow. “You’ve never refused a lesson before. In fact, you’ve learned faster than I had even hoped. Why now?”
She gave a tiny shake of her head, and drew herself even closer, hunching over slightly. “I said I don’t want to learn about this. Isn’t there something else you could teach me? I like the bits about the stars and the moon. Couldn’t we learn more about that?”
“Why, Tarana? Why won’t you learn about fire? It’s one of the most interesting chemical reactions I’m going to be teaching you.”
“Because it reminds me of my sister,” she said quietly, looking at the ground and letting her hair fall over her face. When Rupert didn’t reply, she glanced up at him and found him staring at her quizzically.
“I’ve been watching you most of your life,” he started slowly. “Not constantly, but I checked in periodically, waiting until you were mature enough for me to begin teaching you. Things did not go exactly according to plan. You should have progressed with your magic until you were comfortable using it and wouldn’t mind me helping you along, but you didn’t reach that point until relatively recently. I know there have been…” he paused, trying to find the right wording, “certain events that caused you to avoid using your magic and I had hoped you were past those, but,” he paused again, looking bewilderedly down at her, “I can assure you, I am quite unaware of any sis
ter.”
She stared at him. “My sister. My twin sister. Aurora? If you were watching me so much, you would have seen her. She died the night of the fire, along with my mom.”
Taken aback, Rupert crossed his arms and looked up at the rocky ceiling above them, thinking. Finally, he looked back down at her and gave a slow sigh. “Well, I don’t know what else to do, but this. Uncrossing his arms and kneeling down, he put out a hand and lightly brushed her forehead with the tips of his fingers.
Tarana suddenly felt lighter, much lighter in fact. She curled her toes, trying to cling to the ground, afraid she would drift away. Concentrating on the fact that she felt so light, she was surprised when she looked up and found herself in front of a small white house. She recognized it instantly as the house she grew up in, although it seemed slightly different. It was smaller than she remembered, the mossy steps leading up to the door shorter, and its paint was peeling off in places. Glancing to her side, she saw the tree she used to climb was much shorter, the limbs closer to the ground. Everything seemed older and younger at the same time.
Hesitatingly taking a step forward, she drifted across the ground, never quite rising above it, but never quite touching it either. She skimmed across the dirt path and up the stairs to the door. She stopped to knock, but her drifting momentum carried her forward, through the door. Automatically squeezing her eyes shut as the solid door loomed in her face, she braced for the impact, but it never came.
She opened her eyes to find herself inside the house. The smell of potatoes and onions frying filled the steamy air and she heard someone clattering pots in the kitchen. She looked around wonderingly, as nothing had ever looked so familiar to her – the worn wooden chairs, the faded stain on the floor partially covered up by a rug, it was all the same.
She drifted down the hallway, gaining speed as she half-floated, half-stumbled and passed through another door before she could slow herself. Narrowing her eyes in thought, it took her several moments to figure out where she was. It was only when she saw a skinny dark-haired girl lying on the bed that she realized she was in her old room.
The girl glanced over at her and Tarana opened her mouth to explain who she was, but then realized she had no idea where to begin. She closed her mouth again as the girl looked away unresponsively, and Tarana realized that the girl couldn't see her.
“Hello?” she tried to say, but no breath would come from her mouth. It was as if her lungs were empty and after a second, she realized they were. She tried to take in a breath, but nothing happened. Panic-stricken for a moment as she tried unsuccessfully to breathe, she finally forced herself to calm down. She seemed to have no need for air anymore.
Turning her attention to the rest of the room, Tarana tried to focus on something else other than her inability to breathe. It quickly slipped her mind as she realized there was something very strange about the room, something missing. It was smaller than she remembered, as the rest of the house was, but much smaller, more so than anything else. With a cold shock, she noticed what exactly was missing: half the room.
She recognized her side of the room and with a quick glance at the girl on the bed, she recognized herself, but Aurora's things – her bed, her toys, and Aurora herself were gone. All that remained was Aurora's bookshelf, although it was much emptier than she remembered. In the place that the other half of the room should be was an empty wall with nothing but a small mirror affixed.
Trying to figure out how it was possible, she drifted slowly through the rest of the house. Everything else seemed exactly how she remembered it, and what's more, the dimensions were exactly the same. There seemed to be no space for her bedroom to be any larger, yet she remembered that it had been.
Puzzled, she watched as her younger self burst out of the room suddenly, heading toward the kitchen for dinner. Tarana trailed after her, watching intently. The younger Tarana spoke little to her mother, eating in silence and then quickly heading back to her bedroom. When the girl entered her room, she turned toward the empty wall where Aurora's bed ought to be and glared. “Where have you been?” she muttered.
Tarana stared at her younger self, taken aback. The girl stared at the wall for a moment, then shook her head. “Don't lie to me. Allison and Tina didn't ask about me. They're your friends, not mine. I don't know why you hang out with such snobs. I hate them.” She quickly turned away, and Tarana saw something flicker between her fingers.
In the darkening evening, the girl sat on her bed, tossing a globe of light between her hands. Its color changed subtly, going through all the hues of the rainbow, until it faded into white light. Then it began to pulsate slightly, growing in energy, until the entire room was intermittently lit up by the ball. In the moments of light, Tarana saw that the girl's short hair stuck up in tufts, like a static charge, and her eyes were narrowed in concentration.
Finally, she threw the ball against the wall, where it dissipated into thousands of tiny specks of light, which slowly spread throughout the room and faded. Turning once more toward the wall, she shrugged. “Yeah, goodnight.” She slipped under the blankets on her bed, burying herself under them, but continued to flop back and forth, thrashing around for a long time. Tarana continued to watch, feeling a horrible sadness tighten her throat as she realized what was going to happen.
Finally, the younger Tarana resurfaced from under the blankets, blinking wearily and sighing. She slipped out of bed and tiptoed across the room, peering out the window. She stood there for several moments, then sat down in front of the bookshelf. In the dim moonlight, Tarana saw that the bookshelf was nearly empty, with only a few dusty, old books, toppled over on their sides.
The girl picked one of the books up, flipping through it distractedly. Glancing around, she ran a finger down one of the pages, leaving a trail of smoke. Trying to scream or make any noise, Tarana suddenly sprang from where she had been stranding and attempted to tear the book away from the young girl. Her hands passed helplessly through it and she tried to yell in frustration, but no air passed from her lips.
The girl drew her finger down the page again and this time a small flame appeared, followed by more smoke. She watched intently as the small flame spread across the page, the edges blackening and curling upward. Very carefully, she set the book back on the bookshelf, still gently burning.
Dashing across the room, she jumped back into bed, and pulled the blankets over her, leaving her head unexposed and her eyes open, staring at the door. The fire slowly engulfed the book, then quickly leapt to the other books, the smoke rising steadily and the crackle of fire growing more insistent.
The ghostlike Tarana frantically grabbed at everything in the room, trying to get something to smother the flame. Hurtling through the door, she found her mother in the other room, asleep in bed. She grabbed at her, trying to shake her awake, but it was useless. She finally returned to her own bedroom, and slumped down next to the bookcase, watching the fire spread and waiting for her mother to wake of her own accord, as she knew she would.
As the bookshelf itself caught fire, the smoke grew thick in the room, and the young Tarana started coughing uncontrollably, still watching the closed door. Her older self turned toward the door as well, waiting for her mother to burst into the room, but nothing happened.
Growing steadily more concerned, she stood and glanced back at the girl. She was slowly climbing out of bed, her eyes opened wide. Her body shaking as she coughed, she suddenly raced toward the door, throwing it open and slamming it closed behind her.
Standing alone in the burning room flooded with smoke, Tarana realized no one was coming to save her. All she had was herself. Drifting out of the room, she glanced in at her mother, still asleep. Smoke was beginning to creep in under the door and Tarana looked at her sadly one last time, then headed downstairs, out the door, and into the front yard.
She found her younger self, sitting on the dewy grass, hugging her knees to her chest, and staring at the house as licks of flame eventually burst through the w
indows, lighting up the night. It was far too late when neighbors finally awoke and tried to put out the fire. The house collapsed as both girls sat next to each other, watching silently. The neighbors stood back, empty buckets hanging uselessly from their hands as the house burned itself out. By the time the sun began to rise, it was only a twisted pile of rubble and ash, thick tendrils of smoke rising from the ruins.
“Tara?” She heard the voice as a murmur and looked around curiously, but no one seemed to be speaking to her. The other people from the town stood a short distance away, their hushed voices swept up into a drone.
“Tara!” The voice was slightly louder and much more urgent, but sounded distorted. Her body jerked suddenly and everything went black around her. There was a loud ringing in her ears as she opened her eyes wide, trying to see beyond the nothingness. As her eyes adjusted, she realized she was back in the mud, lying on her back. She saw Djerr's face above hers, his expression terrified.
“Tarana, please answer me,” he pleaded.
She opened her mouth, but no words would come out for a moment. Finally, she took a deep breath as the ringing in her ears subsided and she groaned. “Djerr, what's wrong?” He embraced her suddenly and she brushed away his tousled hair from her face. “Seriously, Djerr, you're scaring me.”
“I thought you were dead,” he replied, still holding her. “I woke up and instantly felt like something wasn't right. When I touched your hand, it was so cold. I don’t think you were breathing, Tara.”
She shook her head. “You must have been dreaming. I had to have been breath-” She cut herself off suddenly as she vividly remembered the feeling of being unable to breathe. Closing her eyes, she began to remember what she had been experiencing before she awoke. “Djerr,” she said slowly, opening her eyes, “I wasn't dead. I just...wasn't here.”
The Girl Born of Smoke Page 21