Chapter I.8
Chapter Eight
Ten Years Before the Wedding
Yali was inside, wiping down her scrying bowl when Miria dashed through the doorway. “There’s smoke in town!”
Ever since Nana had taught her the spell that allowed her to transform into an owl, Miria dedicated time each day to working on it. She couldn’t maintain the form for long yet, but she was getting better, and that was how she’d seen the smoke from high above the treetops.
“Yes, it appears someone knocked over a lantern near one of the taverns,” Nana said, seemingly unconcerned. “It will be bad.”
“Can we help?”
Yali put the scrying bowl on a shelf. “Not with this, child, I fear. There will be many dead and too many injured for us to make much difference.”
Miria frowned. Yali had insisted many times that a witch’s duty was to help.
She didn’t see why they should only help when those in need sought it.
What if other people didn’t know they could ask?
Besides, her nana helped children all the time without them even knowing it.
What if there were children who needed help in town?
Miria raised these objections, but her nana was stubborn.
“If you go to town, you will find many people suffering, many people in need of your help. You will want to help them all, and you can’t, and it will upset you.
A witch can only expend so much magic in a given time, as you’re discovering whenever you fall out of the sky.
If you expend all your power, if you leave not a single ember burning inside you like a coal in the fireplace, you won’t be able to replenish it.
And then, you will die, as well. Your heart is kind, but not yet wise.
Sometimes, a witch directs fate, and sometimes she should stand back and let fate do what it will.
Learning to decide when to do these things is never easy, but it must be done. ”
“Well, I won’t,” Miria said. She had, after all, mostly learned to stop herself from falling out of the sky. She was certain she could stop herself in this manner, too. “I think we should do something. I want to go.”
She half expected Yali would stop her as she filled her magical purse with healing spells and supplies, but her nana did no such thing. When Miria turned around, Yali was watching her with an odd expression.
“Perhaps you need to go,” her nana said.
“But wait another hour. Let me make sure the fire is under control and you won’t be rushing into danger.
Then let Tulip or Azalea carry you to the edge of the woods and wait for you there.
Save your strength, and I will keep an eye on you in case there’s trouble. ”
Miria didn’t like waiting when people might need help, but Yali had a point about the fire being dangerous. Miria could control small fires and prevent herself from burning, but if the town fire was large and violent, she would be no match for it.
She did what her nana insisted, and by the time she arrived in town, the fire had been mostly put out.
But Swiftdok was in an uproar. An entire block of businesses and homes was gone, and the reek of smoke, of charred wood, burned straw, and more was almost too much for Miria to tolerate—almost enough to make her resolve falter and accept that Nana had been correct and she should have stayed home.
This was too much. What could she possibly do?
All around, people were shouting about places and objects and names that Miria didn’t know.
Children cried and men cursed. Most people were too lost in their own distress and panic that they paid one ten-year-old girl no mind, but that girl saw them all and heard their anguish.
Miria knew she’d continue to hear them later when she was far away, safely tucked into bed.
Their pain and loss would haunt her. Maybe that, too, was why Nana had told her not to go.
Eventually, Miria navigated through the chaos until she found a street where the injured had been taken, and she wandered among them, trying not to choke on the stink of smoke and their open, raw wounds and burned flesh as she searched for those to whom she might be of use.
Some of the people she passed might have been dead already, or they were too close to it for any help but to be offered that relief.
Others, older girls or women were already assisting with water, tinctures, and bandages.
Miria put a magical poultice on the burned arm of a man whose glazed eyes barely seemed to see her, and she gave a sip of a healing potion to a woman who could not stop coughing. Her hacking fit ceased immediately.
“What is this?” the woman asked.
“Clean water,” Miria told her, for Yali had taught her that some lies were necessary, especially for witches.
Miria moved on, tending another burn victim and a woman who’d broken an ankle jumping to safety, until she found a boy near the end of the street, breathing hard.
Like most of the people nearby, his face was darkened with smoke and ash, but beneath it, Miria could tell he couldn’t have been more than a few years older than her.
He seemed to be trying very hard not to cry, and it was no wonder.
Part of his left pants leg had burned away, and the exposed skin was blackened and bloody.
Miria knelt next to him and rummaged through her dwindling supplies. “What happened?”
She meant mostly to distract him so he wouldn’t notice what she pulled from her purse, but his blue eyes were shrewd when he turned to her. “There was a cat. I had to save her, but then the ceiling …” He closed his eyes, but only briefly. “I got her, though.”
“You were very brave,” Miria said. She found another burn poultice and began cleaning and wrapping his leg. She couldn’t see his face while she worked, but the way the tension drained from his body as the magic took effect and eased his pain was obvious.
It was more so when he grabbed her arm. “What are you doing?”
“It’s just a poultice.”
“It’s magic,” he whispered, and Miria finally looked up. His face had regained its color beneath the grime, and his breathing steadied. But his every nerve was on alert. “I can feel my leg healing. You shouldn’t do that.”
Miria yanked her arm away, annoyed. “I shouldn’t heal you?”
“Not here, not like that.” He glanced down the street, but everyone else was lost in their own suffering. If it was stares he feared, Miria didn’t see why he bothered. “Thank you, but you should go before you’re caught.”
“But …” But she wasn’t tired, not yet. She had plenty of power left, and there were still so many people injured.
Something in the boy’s expression and tone, though, rattled Miria’s bones. His fear was contagious.
“People will not thank you for using magic to aid them.”
Miria raised her eyebrow, ignoring the new tension in her gut. “You did. The people who come to the woods seeking help do.”
The boy shook his head. “I did, but now I owe you. Don’t you see? Those who go to the witch choose that debt. None of us here chose.”
“You don’t owe me anything.” Why would he think she required something in return? It was true that many people paid Yali for her magic, but Yali helped many who could not.
He closed his eyes again and took a deep breath, like she was the one acting irrationally. “I do, though, and you should go before you’re discovered. Don’t make me owe a debt to a dead girl.”
“That’s not how it works,” Miria hissed. But the boy had shaken her, and there were more adults walking down the street. Some man had taken charge and was directing others. Miria did not want to be ordered about by a strange man.
As if sensing her displeasure, the man turned her way. “Girl, get out of here!” he yelled, and Miria scowled.
“You should do as he says,” the boy told her.
Part of Miria was starting to wish she hadn’t healed the boy since he was being so annoying about it, but no. If he’d saved a cat, he deserved to be saved, too. No matter how irritating he was or how worried he was making her.
“Fine.” She stuffed everything back into her purse.
Had her nana known this would happen? Had there been yet another reason why she’d told Miria not to bother?
Miria left town the way she’d come in, unnoticed amid the chaos.
By the time she’d conjured a small light to guide her path through the field and into the woods, exhaustion was setting in.
Perhaps she’d expended more energy than she’d realized.
She hadn’t felt her magic run low, but with so many people to help, so much need urging her forward, making her heedless of her own condition …
Perhaps she’d been lucky the boy had told her to leave.
When she returned to the cottage, Yali was sitting by the hearth, just as she’d been when Miria had left, with her sewing on her lap. She might have been dozing, but her eyes opened as Miria set down her purse.
“You should wash your face,” Nana said. “You smell of smoke and blood.”
Miria knew she was right, so she did. But the smoke lingered on her clothes. Tomorrow, she’d have to wash them.
“How did it go?” Nana asked when she finished drying her face.
“There was a boy …” Miria sat by Yali’s feet in front of the hearth and picked loose threads on the rug while she formed her thoughts.
“He told me people wouldn’t thank me for using magic to help them.
He insisted he repay me later. Why? You help people all the time, and if I chose to help, then I’m not doing it to expect something in return. ”
Yali sighed and inspected her handiwork. Whatever she’d been working on, it seemed to be made of white rose petals and thorns, and Miria hadn’t seen it before. “Many people fear magic because they don’t know it. You did, if you remember.”
She did, of course, remember, but she’d learned a lot since then. As always, the more she knew, the more questions she had. “You said lots of people are born with magic. Why do only witches use it? If other people used it, they would know it and not fear it.”
“Because the children who are born with power, if they stumble upon how to use it, are usually taught to fear it. Magic marks them as being different, and people don’t like being different, so they suppress their power, often without even trying.
And because they feel like they must suppress it, they grow to hate it. ”
“But people trade for magic. They want it.”
“Wanting things and hating those things you want often go hand-in-hand.”
In an exchange that made little sense to Miria, that statement made the least. She got up, deciding it was time for bed. Maybe Nana’s words would be understandable in the morning.
Sleep didn’t come easily. Her mind fixated on the horrors she’d found in town.
Teary-eyed, Miria silently climbed into Yali’s bed some time later.
Her nana didn’t complain despite Miria’s hair still reeking of smoke, and she didn’t give Miria any of those frustrating looks that conveyed I told you so, like when Miria typically did something she’d been warned not to attempt.
Yali merely pulled her blanket around Miria and sang Miria’s favorite song, the one about the young girl who got lost in the forest and was raised by elves who made her their queen.
“Do you have a way to find the boy again?” Nana asked when the song ended.
Miria nodded. She had the cloth she’d used to clean his wounds. It was coated in his blood.
“Good,” Nana said. “You should make him repay the debt. It will haunt him until he’s done it. Now try to sleep.”