The Fire Children (18 page)

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 silvery, 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.

T
HE 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?”

“It’s not salted.”

Ember winked at her. “It’s the symbol of it that counts. Besides, where he is now, there’s no salt left in him.”