The Fire Children (2 page)

It took a few seconds before Yulla saw the cloud-like tufts of white yarn near the top, and some darker stitches that might have been birds. “It’s the tapestry in the Worship Hall, isn’t it?”

“It is. We wouldn’t want the real one destroyed, so we make the miniatures for the Fire Children to burn.”

Sensing an opportunity to show off, Kell butted in. “But we leave some fine things out, too,” she said, as though Yulla hadn’t been sitting right beside her while the priestesses lectured about the Scorching Days. “Our prosperity comes from Mother Sun, so we give some of it back to her as thanks.”

Yulla knew what Kell was thinking of. This morning, Amma had laid a set of jewelry atop her dresser—a pair of lapis lazuli teardrop earrings and a necklace made of a dozen gold strands that shimmered when the wearer moved. Both girls had admired them as their mother set them atop a black velvet square. Amma had worn them only a few times, on the most special of occasions. Kell had hoped to borrow them someday, but now she never would.

“Come on, Yulla.” Kell shackled Yulla’s wrist with her bony fingers. “We have to get home to help Amma.”

Yulla waved her thanks to Old Moll and his apprentices, and hurried to avoid being dragged along by Kell.

T
HE INSIDE OF
their house was cool. Amma had the curtains pulled to block the worst of the day’s heat, and the stone walls and floors had retained some of the prior evening’s desert chill. Yulla took advantage of the empty front room (and Amma’s current absence) to close her eyes and perform the
step-step-spin, step-step-spin
of the
versam.
She wouldn’t turn sixteen for another year yet, but ever since she’d seen Kell perform it at
her
celebration, she’d been practicing when open space allowed.

On the third turn, she collided with something at once soft and solid. She staggered back more out of surprise than lack of coordination, but she went down with an ungraceful
oof
regardless.

Aunt Mouse peered down, a grin playing about her lips. Aunt Mouse was as tall as Amma, but rounder. A frequent fixture in their home, she could be found in their kitchen helping Amma more nights than not. Kell called her Aunt Moon sometimes, especially when she and Amma told the girls to run along so they could talk. The stories said the Scorching Days came because fat Sister Moon came to visit Mother Sun. Sister Moon blocked out the light for days on end, and Mother Sun shooed her children away so she could catch up with her sister, a lot like Amma and Aunt Mouse.

“We thought you girls had run off and joined the witch-women,” said Aunt Mouse.

Kell snickered from down the hall. “We wouldn’t. Yulla’s
scared
of them.”

“I’m not,” she said, as Aunt Mouse helped her up. Though in truth she was, a little. Amma said they were harmless women who knew small, harmless magics. They sold charms for love and luck and happiness in the market. As far back as anyone could remember, the witch-women had lived in Kaladim, sometimes as few as three of them, sometimes as many as a dozen, but they were always a presence in the city. Old histories told of the priests seeking out their wisdom to settle disputes, and of the farmers asking them to read the stars and predict the best time to plant. It seemed everyone had a story about how the witch-women had helped their family in generations past. They were nothing for a girl of fifteen to fear.

But Kell told other tales, from the time Yulla had been old enough to appreciate—and be terrified by—darker stories. She said the witch-women had their own secret temple, where they worshiped dead Father Sea. The desert had once been an ocean, Kell said, whose waters had been even higher than the spires of the Worship Hall. When Mother Sun discovered his affair with the goddess of the wind she’d boiled him away. The witch-women had sworn that one day, they would find a way to avenge him.

Starting with us,
Kell had said.
Starting with the people Mother Sun shaped from the earth to repopulate the world after her rage and grief were spent.
Yulla used to wake from nightmares about the witch-women, gasping for breath as though she were drowning.

“But what if they
do
want to hurt us?” Yulla asked. The Darktimes were coming, after all. Who knew what terrible things they could do in the pitch black? What if they were only biding their time with their ‘harmless’ spells and potions? Plenty of harm you could do in the dark.

Kell entered the room and rolled her eyes. Aunt Mouse gave her a look, the kind that said
you know better.
“Have you been pouring your nonsense into Yulla’s ears again?” Kell started to protest, but Aunt Mouse ignored her and looped an arm around Yulla’s shoulders. It wasn’t so long ago she’d have scooped her up instead, but Yulla was too big for that now, and both of them too old for it. “Think on this: the witch-women are Mother Sun’s children, too. They’re made from the same clay as you, or Kell, or me. Any harm they brought upon us, they’d draw down on their own selves, too. What possible purpose could that serve?”

Yulla had no good answer for that, though she wasn’t fully reassured.

Aunt Mouse let her go and knuckled her back. “Come on, then, girls. Since you’re
not
witches’ apprentices, you can come help your Amma and me set up the cellars.”

The girls had swept the steps leading down into the earth that morning, and had spent a good couple of hours clearing away cobwebs. Most of the time, the cellars were for storage: old furniture; things Abba meant to fix someday; toys Yulla had nearly forgotten since she’d outgrown them. Now that the Scorching Days were coming, though, Amma and Abba had been hard at work turning them into living spaces for the family.

Oil lamps lit the rooms. Amma had infused them with lavender and vanilla to freshen the stale air, but musty smells still tickled Yulla’s nose beneath the sweet. It was even cooler down here than upstairs. Most of their possessions were pushed up against the walls—no sense setting up more than they’d need for a week or two—but Amma and Aunt Mouse had arranged a couch and some cushions and Abba’s favorite chair atop a thick rug. In the smaller alcoves, pallets were set up for beds.

Amma stood at the sideboard when the girls and Aunt Mouse filed into the room. Jars lined its top, filled with dried fruit, pickled vegetables, and jams. Amma’s fingers fluttered over the top of each, left to right, as she named their contents. When she reached the end of the set, she started over, memorizing them so she’d be able to find what was where when the light was gone.

“Dates,” Amma chanted, “Apples. Olives-kumquats-figs. Almond paste, pickled beets, honeycombs, pig.” The ‘pig’ jar was Abba’s salty, smoky boar jerky. Set next to them was a basket of the flatbread that Amma and Aunt Mouse had spent the last couple of days baking. At the end of the sideboard, three enormous jugs stood sentinel. They were nearly as tall as Yulla, each filled to the brim with water.

Amma finished her litany and smiled at the girls. “We’re nearly done.” She pointed toward the alcove that would serve as their bedroom during the Darktimes. “Go on and see. You can change it around if you’d like, but quickly. You need to learn the space.”

Kell pushed past Yulla, but Yulla was smaller, and quick. They reached the entryway at the same time.Yulla sidled backwards so Kell could go first—being first wasn’t worth one of Kell’s bony elbows to her belly.

The arrangement down here was similar to their bedroom above: beds side-by-side with a small table in between. Of course, down here they’d be sleeping on pallets; their bed frames had been broken down and propped against the far wall. Amma had made an effort at comfort, heaping blankets and quilts in thick piles.

The walls were the same bare grey stone as always. The ceiling in here was lower than the one in the main room; Abba would have to duck if he came in to kiss them goodnight. Yulla traced the long straight groove left by a workman’s chisel. Its edges were smooth; the cellars had been hewn from the rock hundreds—if not thousands—of years ago.

“Look at these.” Kell had hopped off her pallet and was peering at the wall behind the table. “Help me move it.”

When they pulled it out, they revealed a whole town populated by stick figures chalked on the stone. The buildings reminded Yulla of Old Moll’s replica-town: there was the Worship Hall with its spires scraping the clouds, there the market; the lookout tower rose above it all, a tiny figure keeping watch within. The house in the middle was bigger than the rest of the town. The artists had left the facade open, so you could peer inside. Below the line that served as the street, someone had drawn the cellar rooms as well. Skinny double-lines branched off on either side of those, leading to the chambers beneath the houses next door.

Tunnels connected all the cellars of Kaladim. They kept the citizens connected during the Darktimes—it was how the midwife had arrived to help Amma through her labor fifteen years before. Yulla and Kell had spent several of the last few days sweeping the cobwebs from the passageway ceilings. Where their tunnel split from the main one, they’d met the ropemaker. He’d been hard at work replacing the lines that served as guides through the darkness, but he’d taken a moment to show the girls how to tie a half-hitch before he’d sent them on their way.

Yulla walked her fingers along one of the chalk tunnels. It ended in a room with three stick figures. She thought they might be dancing. “Who do you think these are?”

“That’s me, and your Aunt Mouse, and our cousin Ro.” Amma stood in the doorway, a wistful smile on her face. “I’d nearly forgotten about those.”

“This was
your
room?” Kell tilted her head, as if she didn’t quite believe it. Neither could Yulla. Amma as a little girl? And Aunt Mouse? She couldn’t picture either of them her own age—they’d always been old. Not ancient like Old Moll, maybe, but old all the same.

“It was. Our family has lived here a very long time. Your ancestors were the stonecutters who carved out these cellars.” She traced a circle around the three dancing girls, her eyes gone soft with memory. Then she was Amma again, all business as she said, “Come on. We still have much to do before tomorrow morning.”

She was not a woman prone to exaggeration. Over the next several hours, they finished stowing the furniture, baked enough extra flatbread to last through a year of the Darktimes, and checked and rechecked their supplies.

When Abba came home, they began memorizing the space that would be their living quarters. Someone would call out a place to start from and a place to go, and the five of them took turns navigating around with blindfolds on. Abba made it into a game, taking away points if you barked a shin on an obstacle; awarding them if you could find your way even after someone spun you around a few times.

Aunt Mouse and Amma won, of course. Despite the grey twisting through their hair, they moved around like girls at the
versam
: confident, graceful, sure.

Kell was slightly less poised, the loss of sight stymying her, but only at first. Soon she’d learned the room as quickly as she’d learned the
versam
. Yulla felt awkward and ungainly when it was her turn beneath the blindfold, but she figured out the trick soon enough—shuffle your feet forward, sweep your hands along. Listen. Feel.

Abba had a terrible time of it, stubbing his toes and tripping over everything in his path. Once, he ended up in the privy instead of the tunnel, and only came back when they all started giggling. Yulla suspected him of faking, but it was rare for Abba to be so carefree. She played along, like the others.

At sunset, they made their way to Kaladim’s main thoroughfare and took part in the feast. Amma and Aunt Mouse had made a double batch of lemon cakes—one for the townspeople, one for the Fire Children. While the adults prepared smaller tables for their families and friends, the children of Kaladim set to painting the great stone trestles in the middle of the street. Suns dominated the others’ pictures, and likenesses of how they imagined the Fire Children would appear. Squabbles broke out here and there among the younger children as artwork got critiqued.

Kell drew winter flowers, “Because the Children are here in the summer, so they won’t be able to taste them.” She looked sad as she dabbed crimson on the white petals’ tips, and Yulla thought she knew why: Kell was seventeen. As much as she enjoyed playing the grown-up, this would be the only time she’d be able to participate in this part of the festivities. When next the Darktimes came, she’d be an adult—maybe even married, with children of her own. The last time, she’d been too young to remember much of anything aside from the excitement of her little sister’s birth.

It was true for all of the older children in Kaladim, Yulla included. She could be twenty the next time Sister Moon visited Mother Sun. Or older. It was too far away for her to worry over, but she’d heard the others discussing it these last few weeks as the temperatures soared, heralding the return of the Scorching Days.

“What is that?” asked Kell. She’d finished her flower and peered critically at the scene Yulla had been painting. Yulla’s heart sank.