Firewalker (2 page)

“Hold that sheet over us. Keep the steam in,” he said weakly.

Juliet's arms shook with fear, and the hair on her arms stood up at an uncanny frisson when she came near Rowan's strange bubble of dark light. She threw the sheet over the three of them, including an edge of the now-steaming pot as she wrestled with herself. Juliet was a rational, sensible woman. She knew there was no such thing as magic—except she also
knew
, on some deep level, that what she was witnessing had no other explanation.

“Magic,” Juliet muttered, half out of her wits with anxiety and disbelief.

“Yes,” Rowan replied. “I've got to ease the blood out of her lungs before I mend the damaged tissue, but if I do it too quickly I could choke her.” He suddenly leaned forward, tilting his ear close to Lily's mouth. “What? What are you saying?” Rowan whispered to Lily.

“Water, water everywhere…,” she replied, and then her eyes relaxed, half open and half closed, and her body went slack.

“Lily? Lily!” Juliet gasped, her voice quickly rising in panic.

“She's not dead,” Rowan said. “She's spirit walking. We can't reach her now.”

Juliet saw Lily's lips moving slightly. “Who is she talking to?”

“I don't know,” Rowan replied. “Whoever it is, I hope they give her some comfort.” He sat up and took a shuddering breath, his fierce gaze meeting Juliet's. “Now we really get to work. I know you don't have a weak stomach, so I'm going to count on you, Juliet. This won't be easy or pretty.”

“Don't worry about me,” Juliet replied. He looked at her like he knew her. It puzzled Juliet because something in her whispered that she
did
know this young man, even though she'd never laid eyes on him before. “Just tell me what to do.”

*   *   *

Lily saw her sister and her mother. She saw Rowan. She saw her home. All of the things she loved were inches away from her, but they drifted by like hawks soaring on an updraft. They kept falling away from her until all she saw was mist.

She was floating on a misty ocean. Across from her was herself. Lily and Lillian sat across from each other in identical poses—their legs drawn up close, chins resting on their knees, arms wrapped around their shins. Lily spoke first, and Lillian answered. Mindspeak was all they needed here on the raft.

“Water, water, everywhere,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, every where,

Nor any drop to drink.”

That's quite fitting, Lily. I'm so thirsty.

Are you burned, too, Lillian?

Of course. You and I are in the same boat—or raft, as you imagine it. The pyre gives more than it takes, but it always seems to take more than you can bear.

Where are we?

I call it the Mist. It's neither here nor there, neither living nor dead. Can you remember the rest of that poem, Lily?

No. I read it before I had a willstone. My memory wasn't perfect then like it is now—unfortunately, because I wish I could forget this. I know I won't, though. I remember every second of my life now that I have a willstone.

I've had a willstone since I was six and haven't forgotten anything since. There are things I would give anything to forget. But I can't.

I saw Rowan reading an old math textbook once. Tristan told me Rowan had to relearn nearly everything because he smashed his first willstone and those memories were no longer stored for him. I wonder how many memories Rowan entrusted to his first willstone that are lost to him now.

He's lucky, actually. I remember every second he and I spent together and it kills me.

I don't want to pity you, Lillian.

Then don't. All I'm asking is for you to let me show you some of my memories. We're both unconscious and barely alive. There's no easier time to communicate across the worlds than now. I thought you might like to know more about me. And maybe I want one person to understand me in case I die.

Okay, Lillian, but only because I need someone, too. Pain is lonely, isn't it?

It is, Lily. It really is. But fear is even lonelier.

Show me your fear then, Lillian, and let's be lonely together.

Lily was no longer on the raft. Nor was she herself. In joining Lillian's memory she became Lillian. She wasn't simply recalling what had happened to Lillian, she was reliving it. The first thing she felt was terror …

… The air is wrong. It's choking me and burning the back of my throat. Ash is floating fat as snowflakes. Did I even worldjump?

I had Captain Leto's men build my pyre far from the walls of Salem. In the world I am trying to get to there is no need for the wall anymore, and from my spirit walks with the shaman I have seen this other Salem is substantially different from the one I live in. I've learned that when I worldjump I end up in the exact location I left—only in a different universe—and if I were to worldjump from the top of the wall or from the fireplace in my rooms at the Citadel, I might appear inside a piece of furniture or forty feet in the air. The only safe place to worldjump is from the ground, and even then it's still dangerous. You never really know what dangers await when you cross the worldfoam.

Leto had been reluctant to set my pyre so far outside of Salem. He worried about the Woven, but what I couldn't tell him is that where I was going, there would be no Woven in the woods to fear. I didn't want to promise too much in case the shaman was wrong. Leto and his soldiers are from Walltop. From their vantage, they've seen more of the evils of the Woven than have any other citizens of the Thirteen Cities and have more reason to want them eradicated. More reason to fear them.

I sit up. There's no flame under me. That means I'm not on the pyre anymore. I look around. There's nothing but charred ground and blasted trees as far as I can see into the murky distance. The air isn't just acrid. On the elemental level it roils with huge particles. Damaging ones. They tear through my cells, wreaking havoc.

I'm in the wrong world. One of the cinder worlds. I knew it would be dangerous to worldjump without a lighthouse, but I did it anyway. Rowan says I never listen to anyone, but what choice did I have?

I don't have time to panic. I stand up and run to the trees. I need to build another pyre to fuel a worldjump and get myself out of this dead place. When my hand touches the trunk of the first tree, the bark crumbles in my hand and falls through my fingers like the dried-out walls of an old sand castle. The next tree is the same. And the next. What caused this? The huge particles I see on the elemental level, destroying the life-helix? If so, what caused
them
? It's almost as if the surface of the sun had reached across the void of space and grazed this planet, scouring it of life.

I scan the horizon for Salem. I see the walls, but they aren't the right shape. There must be something wrong with my vision. I squint, trying to understand what I see before me. The walls are not in the process of being pulled down because they are no longer needed, like I saw on the world that got rid of the Woven. Here, the wall is just a useless tumble of rocks and judging from the angle of the stones, it looks as if they'd been blown down by a fearsome wind. No greentowers soar behind the walls nor can I see the spires of the Citadel. I look at where they should be, but they're simply
not there
. I stagger closer, unable to take my eyes off the ruin that was my city. It's nothing but rubble and ash. No hurricane, no matter how great, could have done this and there's no explosion I know of big enough to cause such total destruction.

Except—no, it can't be. Who would be insane enough to use elemental energy—the energy of the stars—as a weapon? But the shards of elements, crashing through all organic life in this world, are huge cell killers. They are the product of this kind of energy, and no other. You can't see the elemental shards in a spirit walk, but now I understand. That's what makes a cinder world. That's what destroys what life remains on those worlds after the initial firestorm has cooled. I never understood until I came and saw the cause with my witch's eyes.

I have to find unburned wood or I will be stuck here until I die of thirst. Or worse. I could be found by someone ruthless enough to survive in this place for however long it's been since the holocaust. The longer it's been, the more animalistic the people here will have become. I've seen things on my spirit walks, even though the shaman told me not to dwell on the cinder worlds or wonder what caused them. I've seen what the survivors do to one another in the years of never-ending winter that follow the great burning.

Enough.

Stop crying.

Pull yourself together and find fuel for your pyre, Lillian …

Lily felt herself being evicted from Lillian's memory, despite wanting to see more. Whatever happened next, Lillian either didn't want to share with Lily or didn't want to relive herself. Lily looked across the raft at Lillian.

What happened, Lillian? How did you find enough fuel in that cinder world to build a pyre?

The answer to that is what made me who I am now. You think I'm a monster, but I think if you could see what made me who I am, you'd agree that my choices, as ruthless as they seem, are justified. The only question is, are you sure you really want to understand me?

Curiosity dug at Lily, but so did distrust. There was a reason Lillian had only showed her a fragment of a memory, and a half-truth could be more manipulative than any lie. Lily knew this, but she still couldn't say no outright because to understand Lillian's story would be to understand something huge inside herself. They were, after all, the same.

I honestly don't know, Lillian.

*   *   *

Juliet turned her head to the side, gagging.

“Easy,” Rowan said in his low, steady voice. He reached out to brace Juliet by her elbow and stopped. His hands were covered in the charred skin he had just peeled off Lily. “Do you need to go outside and get some air?” he asked kindly. Not that there was any difference between the outside air and the air inside the living room at this point. Rowan had insisted they keep all the windows open and it was colder than a meat locker in there.

“No,” Juliet said, shaking it off. “I got this.”

Rowan narrowed his eyes for a moment, weighing Juliet's resolve, and must have seen more strength in her than she was feeling because he nodded once and bent his head over Lily.

The jewel at his throat throbbed with that eerie dark light and he went back to his task. He directed a tendril of light under a small patch of necrotic skin and even though his burned hands were bandaged, he used the
light
to ease Lily's skin away with a precision that no scalpel could ever match. She barely even bled.

It had been a full day since they'd brought Lily back home, and Juliet had seen Rowan do amazing things. Things Juliet could not explain in a rational way. All she knew was that these things Rowan was doing were keeping Lily alive.

“Spray the tincture here,” he directed.

Juliet misted Lily's exposed muscle and sinew with the combination antibiotic and analgesic potion they had made that morning in Samantha's second-best copper-bottomed pot.

“Good,” Rowan mumbled as Juliet sprayed the proper amount of tincture, and then stood back to survey the gruesome landscape of Lily's body. He went to the fire, over which hung Samantha's best copper-bottomed pot, and deftly lifted out a strip of something that looked like a thin film of gauze about three inches square with the flat of one of his silver knives. This was not the first time Rowan had done this kind of surgery, of that Juliet was quite certain.

“Is that really Lily's skin?” Juliet asked. She was fascinated now, rather than disgusted. She watched his stone's mercurial light dance around the edges of the skin graft as he eased it down over Lily's raw bones with infinite care.

“Yes,” Rowan mumbled, finally answering Juliet's question after a long pause. “It's not hard to grow from a culture—not even in inferior conditions.” Rowan paused to shoot Samantha's pots a resentful glare. The cast-iron cauldron he insisted on hadn't arrived yet, and Juliet had endured a full five minutes of his swearing before they went ahead and began the skin-growing ritual in one of Samantha's “inferior” pots a few hours ago. “But skin patches are hard to align,” he continued, still focused on his task. “Every border cell must link to its neighbor seamlessly, or it will leave a scar.” He leaned back again to inspect his work and smiled.

“Will this?” Juliet asked anxiously, looking at his injured hands. “Scar, I mean.”

Rowan shot Juliet a cocky look as if to express how beneath him the notion was, even with his hands burned and bandaged. She almost laughed. He had a way about him that inspired confidence despite the desperate situation they were in, but before Juliet gave over to a moment of levity she stopped herself.

She didn't know what to feel about Rowan. She was starting to trust him, but how could she trust someone with such an outlandish story about where Lily had been for the past three months? He claimed that Lily had been in a parallel universe, and that she had been burned in a battle against an evil witch. Juliet looked down at her sister's three strange stones—willstones as Rowan called them—and grew even more confused. They winked and roiled with a light that looked almost alive. Seeing them and the eerie way they sparkled even in the dark told Juliet that something otherworldly had happened to her sister. And Rowan was undoubtedly using magic to save Lily's life when not even the best medical attention in the world could have done so, whether Juliet wanted to believe it or not.