The Fire Artist (24 page)

Soon Jana comes home, and the first thing I do is grab her hands. They’re grayish-blue and veiny. She looks like a zombie. “Dad’s been freezing your hands, hasn’t he?”

She turns away. I grab her arm. She tries to shake me off. But I’m stronger than Jana, and eventually she gives in. “Yes,”
she says, her eyes hard and dark, the blacks of her pupils threatening to take over her whole iris.

“What else is he doing? Is he forcing you to stay underwater? To hold your breath till you turn blue?”

“Yes.”

I slam a fist into the wall. A picture frame rattles. The five of us from so long ago that the sun has bled out the color, and now we’re just a sepia-toned half-baked family, a son in prison, two daughters with damaged hands, a shell of a mom, and a monster of a father. I grab the picture from the wall, take it to the garbage, and toss it where it belongs.

I return to my mom in her chair. She is nearly catatonic, but underneath her stillness she is quivering. I want to slap her, to knock her senses back into her. To ask her how she could have let this happen. How she could just play the spectator to her husband’s blows. But she was just the collateral damage in the path of the bullet; the bullet of a wish.

“Do you even love him?” She shrinks into herself as I spit out the words. “Do you anymore?”

She is a terrified animal. She doesn’t know where to go, what to say, so she just backs up farther, camouflaging herself in the walls of her cage. I kneel, try to be gentler this time. “Do you want to be like this, Mom? Do you? Or do you want to be well? Do you want this stupid wish-curse gone?”

She doesn’t say anything for a long moment. The air conditioner hums in the background, cooling the air between us. Then she looks at me. “I want to go out again. I want to swim again. I want to be your mom again.”

If I were a knight, I’d unsheath a sword and go slice off the
dragon’s head. “What are you going to do when he gets home?” I ask.

“I’m going to tell him to never touch the two of you ever again,” she says, and for the first time in years she doesn’t sound meek or scared. She sounds like herself. As if she’s fighting to be the woman she once was even as she’s still stuck.

I have to do something to save her from this curse. I have to find another way. I have seven days to do everything I can. I’m not going to let them go to waste. I will solve this problem if it’s the last thing I do.

Which it very well may be.

“Mom, do you have the keys to Xavi’s old car?”

Jana pipes in. “Kitchen drawer. I’ll get them.”

“Mom, we’ll be back soon. I promise.” Then I turn to Jana. “You’re coming with me.”

I haven’t driven in ages. I’ve rarely had the chance or the need. But I manage, slinging an arm across Jana’s headrest as I back out of the driveway. The rusty old car sputters as I shift into drive and head down our street to the main drag, then the highway that’ll take us to the Everglades.

The trip doesn’t take long, but there’s enough time to tell Jana where we’re going. She doesn’t resist and she doesn’t freak out, and I take some small bit of pride that she’s got a core strength in her, an iron barrier my dad can’t touch. I park in a deserted lot by an old dock that used to house a chartered tour company. Some people who live in the Everglades and don’t have or rent their own docks will stash their boats here, a risky
move, since you’re not supposed to park your boat without a permit. But the cops hardly ever clamp down, and since these boat owners aren’t exactly running on the right side of the law to start with, I find no moral objection to commandeering one of their vessels for a quick ride.

“C’mon. Get in.” I motion for Jana to join me in
The Themis Steed
, a motorboat that’s barely big enough for the two of us but will do the job, since the owner was kind enough or drunk enough or stupid enough to leave the keys inside the glove compartment of the boat. This is not uncommon among boat owners.

“You’re just taking it?”

“I’ll return it. Obviously.”

Jana hops in and we power away, driving deeper into the thick reeds and dark reptilian-strewn waters. I know the route. I’d never forget the route. I stop after a few miles and turn off the motor.

I hold out a hand to Jana.

“We have to walk through the water?”

“Yeah.”

“But there’s probably pythons and boas and eels and so many yucky things,” she says.

“Probably, but you’re with me, and I’m basically the equivalent of python repellent. They won’t come near us. They don’t like my heat.”

“It’s still gross,” she says, and she sounds like she might gag, but she’s doing it. She’s getting out of the boat and stepping into the hot soup of the Everglades. We trudge through the saw-grass marshes, with tangly reeds that try to ensnare our legs and
swampy branches that brush our skin, trekking foot by heavy waterlogged foot. The water is thick, and the mangroves are greedy, but we’re nearly there, and she’s on her porch.

If there’s anyone in the whole wide world who knows how to undo a wish it’s the Lady. She knows all the ways in and out of things that the rest of us can’t see. She has all the knowledge, and she gained it fair and square, along with a snow gator.

“Well, look who’s here.”

I climb up on the porch, my legs covered in mud and marsh, my sister by my side.

“Let me get you a towel.” She shuffles inside and returns with a dingy blue-and-white dish towel. I wipe off my legs, and notice her snow gator waddling from inside her home to the porch.

“He won’t hurt you. Either of you,” the Lady says, and pats the seat of her swing.

“He won’t, Jana. He’s nice,” I say to my sister as I wipe down my legs, then hand the towel to her. She does the same.

“Sit. And tell me who you’ve brought. Little sister, I trust?”

“This is Jana,” I say.

“Hello,” Jana says.

“What’s your poison, Jana?”

“Water. Or ice,” Jana says.

“You’re not sure which?” The Lady raises an eyebrow.

“I think water. He thinks ice.”

I grab hold of Jana’s wrist and hold up her zombielike hands.

The Lady’s eyes narrow, anger flashes in them, and she strokes her gator’s head. The gator leans into her hand, like a dog being petted.

Jana and I sit down.

“Determined man, that father of yours,” the Lady says with a snort. “Doing the same to your sister.”

Jana scoffs.

“Thinks he’s got it all figured out. Thinks he can bring out your elements,” the Lady adds.

“But that’s never how the elements come out,” I say, and there’s an eagerness in my voice, like I want to prove I’m a good student, that I’ve learned, that I’ve listened.

“Never is. Elements don’t respond to that kind of human hubris.” She looks hard at both of us. “Or that kind of terror.”

I glance at my tough little sister, who tries hard to keep it together. But her eyes are wet, a giveaway that keeping it together isn’t so easy.

“So what brings you back?” the Lady asks me.

“I need to know how to reverse a wish.”

The Lady whistles low and shakes her head. “You wishing when I told you not to?”

“Yes, but I’m going to accept my punishment like a big girl. Only this question is about another wish. It’s not for me. It’s for my mom.”

“Wishes are binding, girl. There’s no way to turn one around unless you petition the granter union.”

“No other way at all?” I say; then I tell her what my dad wished for so many years ago, and what the wish did to my family. I don’t know that my mom could have protected us from him if she’d been healthy. But I know this—she didn’t have the chance. He reduced her to a husk of a wife, a shell of a mother.

“Granters are powerful, Aria. As powerful as the elements.
Often more powerful than Mother Nature. More powerful than humans. Look at the peace in the M.E. Only possible because of granters.”

My heart leaps into my throat, thinking of Taj’s unwitting sacrifice. A tear forms in the corner of my eye—he’s one of the reasons why his country is no longer torn apart. But he’s one of those who are hurting.

“There has to be a way,” I say, pressing on as I return my focus to the Lady. I can’t just let my mother spend her days shrinking into a papasan chair. “There’s always a way. That’s what you taught me. You showed me the way to fire. Another way. How can there be no other way here than to ask the granter union to reconsider?”

“Oh, child. You are fire, through and through. All that passion, all the fury, all that righteous indignation.” The Lady chuckles, but she’s not laughing at me. “What makes granter magic so strong are the rules. The recording of the wishes. The regulations. The union. The payment system.” The Lady links her fingers together to demonstrate that sturdiness. “That makes the bonds of the wishes stronger.”

I bang my fist on the arm of the swing. I look at Jana and see the years unfolding in front of her. I couldn’t shield her from my dad, and I can’t protect her from her future, not when I’m about to vaporize in a matter of days.

“So, what are we supposed to do?”

“Aria, if the world were fair and just, there’d be a spell, a magic potion to undo this,” she says, then she lowers her voice to a whisper, even though no one is around. “Wishes can come undone when the wish has been fulfilled or when the wish no
longer applies. If you wished to be purple on September 3 only, then the wish would apply to that day. Your father’s wish would come undone when the conditions of the wish no longer exist.”

“I can’t do that. I want to. But I can’t.”

The Lady nods several times. “I understand. Now, pet my gator and tell me all about how my fire recipe worked out for you.”

The Lady leans back into the swing. I bend down, and touch the gator’s head. Jana gives me a look as if I’m crazy. The gator’s skin is tough and leathery, but he leans into my hand as if I’ve just come home from work and he wants me to rub his chin.

“See that?” the Lady says, looking at her swamp pet. “You take care of him, you treat him right, he’ll take care of you when you need him to. He’s no ordinary gator.”

“I will take care of him,” I say as I look at the Lady. I want her to know that I’d never forget my debt to her. That I always intend to make good on it. “I promised.”

“I know you will, but that’s not what I mean,” she says, and we pet him together. She doesn’t say more. She doesn’t tell me what she means, so I don’t ask. Jana watches me, shifting her eyes from me to the gator and back again, and it registers for her that she can touch him too.

“It’s okay,” I say to my little sister, the girl I’m not able to save. “He won’t hurt you.”

The gator lifts his massive snout high in the air, waiting for a tickle. Jana obliges, one intrepid finger stroking his chin.

My father still hasn’t returned when Imran calls the next morning.

“Aria,” Imran says, rocks in his voice. “I’m disappointed.”

He says it like a father who just discovered his daughter cheated on a math test, or worse. Who fibbed her whole way through high school, eyeing the papers of other students, plagiarizing their ideas and thoughts.

I sink down to the floor of my bedroom. Every part of my body feels heavy, my arms and legs like sandbags. My wish is now official.

My imagination hunts for Taj in the underground tunnels of New York City, but I know he’s very likely nonexistent. He’s a cipher until the next reckless, bankrupt fool needs something he can’t get on his own. Or until he’s freed in six more days, when I replace him.

“You had such potential,” Imran says, and I can hear the wistfulness in his voice. The loss.

“I’m sorry,” I say, choking back a tear. “I wanted to do well for you.”

Imran believed in me. Imran gave me an opportunity. For a few short months, he was a far better father figure than the real one I’ve been saddled with. Imran, at least, tried to keep me away from trouble. He didn’t want me near someone who’d already wished. Someone who’d been tempted and gave in to the worst kind of Faustian bargain.

“I wanted you to do well too. I want the Leagues to be the best. That’s why we struck a deal with the union to test for granter use. We want our Leagues clean; they don’t want their granters used simply for sport. And you were one of the best I’d ever seen. Why did you have to wish for more?”

My brain trips over the last word he says.
More?
I didn’t wish for more. I wished for natural-born fire. But then, I’m not going to argue semantics with Imran. The result is the same—I’ve been expelled. And my family too.

“I wanted to stay in the Leagues,” I say, and it’s half-true, but it’s as close as I can get to a true answer. I had too much want, too much need, and I reached too far. I got greedy.

“It makes me sad to have to do this, Aria. But you have a lifetime ban. There will be no more Girl Prometheus.”

But the strange thing is, he says nothing about my family, about the ban for stealing elements earning them a ban too. Maybe he forgot to mention it?

“I’m sorry. I’m very, very sorry.”

“I know you are,” he says, but there’s no reprimand in his tone. He sounds strangely warm, even forgiving as he continues. “And I also know those burns on your hands aren’t from
playing with fire when you were a kid. I only wish there was something I could do about where they came from.”