Chapter 20 #3
Finn never did this. Never held fire, not that I know about anyway. He always just willed an already-made flame to burn higher.
Wide-eyed, I look at Alexus. He jumps up, losing his blanket in the process, and takes the tinder from the tin. Squatting, he stuffs it between two pieces of wood.
“Now.” He looks at me pointedly. “This is the hard part. Just send the fire over here.” He motions with his hand.
Send it over there? Gaping, I stare at him with as much of an incredulous look as I can force onto my face.
He rises and stalks across the small space between us and settles behind me on his knees. Again, he cups my hand and directs it toward the pile of twigs. “It’s mental. You will the fire where you want it to go. Like most any small magick, it will do what you want once you’ve harnessed it.”
Will. I’ve willed lives back together. Surely I can will fire.
I close my eyes and see the flame in my hand dripping molten over the kindling. I imagine a blazing fire rising while I hover over it, warming my frozen hands. I envision glowing embers crumbling to ash, the open heat giving rise to new flame.
“Think of the thing you want most in this world,” Alexus says against my ear. “This can strengthen your magick. It’s where true power comes from. We often hold the most will for our strongest desires.”
My mind is never blank, especially these last few days, but in that moment, there’s nothing. Nothing possible, anyway. What I want most in this world are things I can’t have. My mother. My father. My sister. My village.
To reverse time.
The winds blow stronger, and a blast of snow whips my hair against my face, stinging my cheeks and eyes.
I try to hold on to the fire like I held on to the sword magick, try to keep my mind focused.
But another sharp gust cuts through me, and I still can’t see anything in my mind’s eye, the thing I want most.
I don’t know what I want most anymore. Revenge? To kill the Prince of the East? To find my sister? To live? To die and be done with this frozen world? I have too many desires, and they all feel out of reach or wrong.
Overwhelmed, I open my eyes. The flame is gone. On the rising edge of panic, I face Alexus, breathing hard.
“I can try again,” I sign.
He blinks at me, snowflakes settling and dying on his face. “What happened? You were doing so well.”
I was, but then…
Shaking my head, I turn away from him and draw my knees to my chest.
He runs his hand over my back. “It’s all right, Raina. I imagine we’ll have plenty of cold to practice in these next few nights.”
He goes back to the kindling and tinder box, and I sneak a glance his way. His hands shake harder now, the world outside our little stone fort a wall of whirling white. He’s persistent, and that’s a good thing, because finally, after a time, the flint sparks, and a tiny flame catches and holds.
Tirelessly, he works, trying to build the flames higher while I think the words Fulmanesh, iyuma, over and over. I don’t believe it helps, though.
Eventually, there’s enough fire that my skin begins to warm. The small blaze fights the wind and snow and wins.
Alexus blows out the lamp light to save the oil, tosses his blanket over his shoulders, and sits closer to the fire.
I check on Hel just to make sure she’s breathing.
She is—harder and faster than normal—and her hand is warmer than it has any right to be.
I worry it might be a fever, so I heal her cuts and wounds—including the gash General Vexx pounded above her eye.
When I finish, I return to the fire and sit near Alexus, holding my hands near the heat as exhaustion creeps over me. I’m worried about Hel, but I’m not sure what more I can do. Sometimes, even with all this magick inside me, I feel so powerless.
“Sorry,” I sign, my fingers beginning to thaw. “I tried.”
Alexus nudges me with his shoulder. “I told you. It’s all right. We’re going to live.” He gestures at the fire with a blanket-covered fist. “You came so close. It isn’t easy, fire magick. You made it look that way, though.”
“Until I lost it.”
He shrugs. “Again, we’ll live to try another day.”
“Fire magick would have been useful in the vale. All those winters.”
“I’m sure. But magick like that tends to spread, taught from parent to child, friend to friend, mentor to student.” He pauses, as though unsure about his next words. “Fire in a village can be dangerous.”
Biting my lip, I shake off the image that comes to mind and focus my thoughts elsewhere.
“Your ability,” he says. “You’re a seer, a healer, and a resurrectionist? What is that like?”
I make a face. “Seer, yes. Healer, yes. But resurrectionist? No. Is there such a thing?”
He laughs, but his face falls more serious. “But on the green, I saw you…”
He pauses, though I know what he was going to say.
“I heal, but I have never brought anything or anyone back from the dead. I have saved animals from dying, and you, but that is the extent. I am not very skilled. I thought my magick was secret. I taught myself.”
At first, he looks regretful, like he realizes he made me think of Mother yet again, but there’s a hint of surprise to his expression, too.
“You’ve done well to make it this far with such complex abilities without a teacher,” he says.
“And yes, being a resurrectionist is a thing. It’s usually a darker type of magick and a form of necromancy.
I wasn’t sure about you. The line between healing and resurrecting is often thin.
It seemed that was what you were doing—or trying to do—with your mother. ”
Resurrection. I can see the temptation. Being able to bring back someone you love? To rescue their soul from the Shadow World?
I shake my head, clearing away that thought, and let the moment pass. I can’t sleep, tired as I am, and an odd desire to keep talking to Alexus takes over.
“Do you still believe the Witch Walkers’ magick will not harm us?” I ask. I have every doubt about that theory at this point.
“I do. I think the problem is that some of this is not their magick. Like the flowers dying when we entered the wood. My witches wouldn’t have us enduring such miserable conditions either. Unless the Eastlanders are closer than we think.”
“Then who is doing it?” I fist my fingers and bite my cheek, frustrated. “Who is the prince’s sorcerer?”
He shrugs. “Probably the same person who built the boundary in the valley. The question is, how does he even know we’re here?”
“Hel mentioned a general. General Vexx?” I spell the name. “It could be him.”
Alexus tilts his head, and his eyes reveal a contemplative thought. “Possibly. Unfortunately, I don’t think we can know until we come face to face with whomever it is.”
That’s nothing I want to think about, so again, I divert that line of thought. There’s a question burning inside me that I have to ask, and it has nothing to do with the prince.
“What happened to your magick?” I sign. “Why can you no longer use it?”
I imagine that he would be lethal if he could. He knows Old Elikesh so intimately, so completely, all the finer details, like he’s studied every word from every angle.
After a heavy sigh, he says, “It died. A long time ago.”
I didn’t even know magick could die.
“When you were a child?” I inquire.
He looks up from my hands, and there, under the firelight, something moves in his eyes. I swear I see darkness there sometimes, bottomless and liquid.
Otherworldly.
“Something like that.” He leans back and lies flat on the cold ground, staring at the stone ledge above us. “Enough questions for tonight. You must be tired. Get some rest while you can.”
Much as I want to, I don’t press him for more information about his magick or his past. I’m curious, even more so thanks to his cryptic answer, but he’s right. I’m bone-tired, my hands, too. And even if I wasn’t, I’m fairly certain he just ended our conversation.
When I lie back, wrapped inside his cloak, the ground is as miserable as expected. There might be heat tonight—or today, whichever it is here—but without the gambeson, there will be no comfort, and I’m sure I’ll never rest like this.
Beyond our shelter, a crow caws and a wolf howls, sending a chill across my skin.
I can hear Alexus breathing, though, even from a few feet away.
The steady rhythm calms me, and I think about his words, repeating each syllable in my mind, fluttering my fingers like I’d done when I drew threads from his chest. Fire of my heart, come that I may see you, warm my weary bones, be my place of rest.
Within minutes, after so many hours awake, I tuck my arm under my head and drift to sleep, the memory of Alexus Thibault’s heartbeat throbbing in my fingertips.