The Fire Artist (22 page)

I turn to Taj, anger flaring in my eyes, my body sharpened with a new form of hate for my father. How could he do this to her? “That’s why she’s confined to her stupid chair and stupid house, because of my stupid, selfish father?”

“It would seem that way.”

“So this is how a jackass granter works,” I say, taking deep, sharp breaths. “Just like you told me when we first met. They work
literally
, and the payment is often the wish itself.”

“Yes. Apparently the wish was carried out with a horrific sort of exactitude.”

I shake my head several times, as if I could wish this all away. “He made her this way. It’s all his fault.”

Taj says nothing. But an idea hits me in the silence. One more way to spend my wish. On my mom. “Can I wish her free? Can I use my wish to wish her free?”

He nods. “You could. But unraveling another granter’s wish is complicated. If every wish came undone with another wish, then the fabric of wishing would be compromised. You have to be very precise in the wording if you’re unraveling a
wish. And wishes can only be undone with another wish by going before the granter union to make your case.”

I roll my eyes. “Well, that pretty much screws me over. The Leagues won’t let me use a granter, and even if I’m not using one for my powers, they’d probably kick me out anyway.”

“They probably would.”

Then it hits me.
The wording
.

It’s all in the wording. I look back at my father’s wish in the book reading every awful word.
I wish for my wife to never leave me as long as we both shall live
.

Maybe that’s the loophole right there.
Live
. My mother will be free when my father is dead.

I could kill him. I have the means. I have the weapons. I could burn him to a crisp. I open and close my hands as if I’m practicing, getting ready to light him up.

Then I press my fingers into my palm. A reminder that I won’t go there.

I don’t set people on fire, so I can’t undo my father’s awful work, his terrible wish gone awry.

My heart clutches again, like it’s gasping for breath. I ball my hands into tighter fists, as if I can contain my fire with sheer will. But the stretching and pulling in my chest becomes too much. I inhale sharply and I let go of a messy jet of flames. Taj’s eyes widen, but I grab the fire, letting it retreat into me.

The relief is temporary. I’m a time bomb. The clock in me is ticking perilously close to some kind of destruction. Taj pulls me over to the couch and wraps his arms around me. I breathe in. I breathe out. I’ve been broiling in the sun, but it’s as if I just dipped into cool blue waters for a moment.

The calm before the storm. The quiet before the wish I have to make.

I know he can’t hold me forever, but I’m going to do my best to relish these last few moments, before I do something I hate, before I become more like my father and make a wish that will hurt a person I love. My father has molded me in his image, and I’ve detested it, and him.

But I am more like him than I thought.

I feel Taj’s hands on my face, brushing hair from my cheek. An amnesty for another moment.

“I like this,” I whisper in a ragged voice, like I’m barely holding on.

“So do I.”

“I like you,” I continue, more roughness in my throat. I have to get these words out. I have to say this, even as my body rages against me.

“I like you too, Aria.”

“There’s more though,” I say, and now I’m scared in a new way, in a way I’ve never been afraid before. I’m going to put it out there. He pulls back so he can look at me. His eyes are clear, and kind, and full of everything I never knew I wanted, but everything it turns out I really need.

I practice the words silently first—
I’m in love with you
. The strangest sensation fills me from head to toe. Lightness. I feel as if I could float, as if I weigh nothing. I’m not coiled or tense or looking behind my back. I’m happy, and I’m safe, and I’ve accomplished safety in the presence of another person, not a towering plume of flames that I made myself.

I say the words again in my head, and I don’t feel like I’m
floating anymore. Because now I’m flying, now I’m soaring, and though we’re lying very still and quiet on the couch, I’m higher than I was on the rooftop.

Maybe this is how I’m different from my father. He wished out of fear. He has lived his life out of selfish fear. I’m not my father. I’m not my mother. I’m not my brother. I’m more than a thief, I’m more than an artist, I’m more than my lightning-struck heart. I’m myself. And maybe I can have the things I want and the things I need. I can save my sister, I can save myself, and I can save this marvelous boy too.

I sit upright. “I’m ready. I’m ready to wish.”

He winces, as if this pains him, then he straightens up too. He takes a small notebook from his pocket. He becomes businesslike, and I get it. We have to discuss the terms.

“Let’s go aboveground,” I say. Because I want air, I want space, I want room to revel in how much our lives are about to change for the better.

We leave, and this time we take the short route, emerging near the Flatiron Building moments later. He walks me over to Madison Square Park across the street. It’s after midnight, it’s dark, and we’re the only ones here. We stop near a park bench and stand next to it.

“What are you going to wish for, Aria?” he asks in a mechanical voice, because he is all business now, and he has no choice. But this will be one of the last times he has to feel what it’s like to be mastered.

“I’m going to wish for you to grant me natural-born fire, fire that doesn’t fade every few months, fire that doesn’t need lightning to replenish it, fire that I can call on wherever and
whenever I need it for the elemental arts. Fire as if I’d been born with it.”

“And how do you propose to pay?”

I’ve thought long and hard about it. I don’t have much to offer, but the fact is, it won’t matter. I won’t have to pay up because he’ll be free when my debt comes due. There will be no one to collect, so it’ll be as if my loan has been wiped clean.

But even so, to make this work for both of us, I’ll have to wish first because I need natural-born fire to stay afloat in my world. I need to bargain for it properly. If he knows my payment offer is as good as crocodile tears, I fear some granter magic may prevent him from agreeing, may clamp down on him and keep him bound to granter rules and regulations. So we’ll have to determine terms first, as if we’re really going through the whole wish-and-payment officially, even though I know the payment will be erased when I tell him how I feel.

Love,
it erases any payment due from the wisher, and it frees the granter
.

“Myself,” I say, my voice bright and certain. “I offer myself. I offer to trade places with you.”

He shakes his head. “That’s crazy. You don’t want to be me.”

I reach out to touch his arm. “Trust me. It’ll be fine. You said that’s how some people pay. With themselves. By taking the place of a granter. That’s all I have—myself. That’s all I can offer. It has to be good enough. You said it could be. So I offer myself. I offer to trade places with you.”

“And when do you propose I collect?”

“You can collect on the payment in one week. That’s it!
Seven measly days is all. And you can collect and I’ll take your place as a granter.”

He scoffs. “Are you insane? If you turn into a granter in a week, why do you need—”

“You know they’re fair terms.” “I say, cutting him off. You know they’re more than fair. Taj, this will be fine. It’ll all be fine. You have to trust me. Please tell me you trust me. Please tell me you know that I know what I’m doing.”

I pick a week because it won’t matter. In a few minutes, I’ll have fire and he’ll be free and there will be no need to collect. The payment I’m making will be wiped clean.

He presses his lips together, keeping his mouth closed. His jaw is set hard. “The terms are satisfactory,” he says through gritted teeth, as he finishes recording them on his notepad, terms that will never be entered into the ledger for all granters to see. Terms that will be erased when I tell him the next thing. I’m practically bouncing, and I want to spill the secret. But I have to keep this wish on the up and up.

“And now, your wish, officially.” He gives me a perfunctory little bow, doffing an imaginary hat in deference to his wisher.

Who also happens to be in crazy love with him.

I’m not sure which to say first—that I love him or what I wish—so I speak quickly, getting all the thoughts out in one big breath.

“I wish, as I stand before you, fully and wholly in mad, crazy love with you, Taj,” I say, and his eyes widen when they register what I’ve said, and we’re in cahoots now, we’re teammates, we’ve beaten the system, and he knows it, and he’s smiling and so am I as I finish, “for natural-born fire. And just in
case, it wasn’t clear, I’m in love with you, I’m in love with you, I’m in love with you with my whole entire heart. So there.”

He parts his lips, like he’s about to say something, and I hope he’s going to form the words
I’m in love with you too
, but then some force makes him say what any granter must say after any wish, whether he’s about to be freed or not.

“Your wish is my command.”

He spreads his arms wide and far, like he’s parting the seas. Mist rises from his hands. But the mist isn’t cold or wet—it’s more like a waft, like twin lines of sweet smoke that have the power to move the earth, to shake the mountains, to deliver the greediest or loneliest or hungriest of wishes. The park is humming, as if there’s a low buzz somewhere, a rumble in the smoke. As I watch them radiate from his hands, I can feel the heat in them, the natural-born fire I’ve wished for, the fire he’s giving me. The two lines of smoke wrap around each other and weave their way to me. They meet at my heart, passing like spirits through my skin, then my bones, seeping into my marrow, into my very DNA, leaving their imprint, as if my parents’ genes had marked me the right way back when I was formed.

Now I’m being formed anew, reborn, forged by magic more powerful than DNA, stronger than the lightning I stole from the sky.

The wish pours through me, reclaiming my stitched-up parts, restoring my ashen heart. I can feel the wish taking root, cleansing my dark and dangerous insides, transforming them into something good again. My body grows warmer because there is new fire inside me, a healthy fire, a whole fire. It’s removing the clutching, the tightening. It’s extracting the waxing and
the waning and leaving in its place a steady and a strong natural-born fire.

Then Taj closes his hands, and I’m about to run to him, to kiss him and tell him it worked, it totally worked, and now we’re here and we’re free. Both of us.

But he is gone.

I look around, in case Taj pulled his disappearing act again, in case he’s playing with me. Or maybe he’s relishing his freedom, boinging and bounding around, a happy dog jumping through snowbanks, carpe diem-ing.

Or maybe when a granter is freed, he returns to his home. Did I send Taj back to the M.E.? Back to his parents? But I want him here with me. I want to rejoice in our freedom. I want to hug him and kiss him, and yeah, I want him to tell me he loves me too. I want to see the twinkle in his eyes that says he knows I pulled it off, and I saved us.

I hunt through the park, look under benches, peer up in trees. I run to the playground to see if some
I’m free
moment came over him, and maybe he’s climbing the swings and hooting at the sky. I search through every corner and then do a loop around the city blocks that surround the park.

It occurs to me he might have just up and left.
Thank you, ma’am, I’ll be on my way
. But Taj wouldn’t run off. He had to
be feeling it too. I don’t think I was the only one falling. I flash back on that smile when I said I loved him, the way he was about to speak too. The memory reassures me, so I search again.

When I return to the spot where he granted my wish, there’s a note tacked up to a park bench, a note that wasn’t there before.

I pluck it off the bench. The ivory sheet of paper has been stamped from
The Union of Granters
.

Underneath the spot is a note in pristine cursive script.

Dear Aria—

In the world of granters, we operate according to rules, guidelines, regulations, and a little thing known as the quibble. A quibble, if you will, is a catch. Some might call it a loophole. We also refer to it as “reading the fine print.”

Here are a few provisos, loopholes, conditions, etc., etc., you might not be aware of in the granting of wishes, and in the freeing of granters. The condition of freedom via love can only be achieved when the wisher has a whole heart, as in said granter must be loved by someone with his or her whole heart. Perhaps you might love with the entirety of your heart. But alas, our world operates according to the profound power of semantics
.

Here comes the quibble. You, Aria, do not have a whole heart. Yours has been charred. The rules are clear when it comes to love, and you simply do not have the proper
parts to set a granter free. We’d wish you better luck next time, except there won’t be a next time
.

Sincerely
,

The Governing Body of the Union of Granters

I sink down onto the bench, my legs heavy cinder blocks, my head a brick.

You don’t get to have it all. You can’t beat the system. I am what I have always been. A defective thing, a Frankenstein’s monster, and in seven days life as I know it ends.