71. Then Fire
THEN: FIRE
We married less than a season after that alleyway confrontation.
I never told Avery, but hearing his dauntless declarations, however lustful or crude, had captured my heart.
And though I never confessed to my eavesdropping that night, I trusted my husband more with other things as winters passed.
I no longer hesitated sharing the most inane or private things.
The meandering thoughts I had while foraging were repeated to him at dinner.
The secrets I had kept to myself were spoken aloud in the dark at night.
But I reasoned I would gain nothing from telling him of my first love.
He had already sensed it when he was courting me, and I had watched him watch Thane on the rare occasions our household gathered with my sister’s.
Avery’s face was wary when he looked at my brother-in-law.
If he harbored any jealousy, he never expressed it.
So I did not enlighten him on the subject of my teenage romance.
What I struggled with the most were the feelings I had about fire. I wanted to tell him of these feelings, but I could not find the words.
I had dreams in the box, as a child, of warm hands made of flame placed on the bottoms of my feet.
I had always pondered over the fact that Brother Tibolt had caved to his convictions while staring into his fireplace.
I remembered Magda always looking to me and saying that there was something other than earth magic in me, she thought.
And there was always the eruption of white and pale orange flames around her body, burning in the back of my mind.
I buried these feelings so much so that I was only able to share them with Avery by way of an accident.
It happened in the most mundane of ways.
I was making a stew. I had started our meal late because, as always, I was distracted by either a book or an errand.
By the time he came into the house for his dinner, I was throwing ingredients in without measurement or thought.
Realizing I had carrots that needed eating, which had sat on my worktable for days, I was hurriedly grating them over the cauldron.
I looked up, an apology on my tongue, when he came into the house, and—distracted—I scraped off the skin on the side of my thumb.
Before I could cry out from that pain, the fire on the hearth tripled in size, nearly eclipsing the cauldron with its opaque, pale heat and caught the edge of my skirts.
Avery and I were both shouting, him beating at my skirts with the tunic he had torn off and me pulling off my thankfully shorter apron and trying to help him.
The fire had no effect on the stone hearth, and nothing else outside of it was burnt except the lower half of my dress.
After beating most of the fire out with clothes, Avery took our water jug, only half full, from the worktable and threw it on my smoking skirts.
We stood, panting and frightened, watching the blaze in the hearth.
Only as it flickered could we make out Magda’s sizable iron cauldron.
Avery went to the little well, brought up a bucket, and doused the entire hearth.
When he peered into the cauldron, he jerked his head back and looked at me with consternation.
“It’s completely burnt. All the vegetables. And there is no broth.”
“You tease me,” I breathed out.
He shook his head. “And the firewood is all ash. All of it. What magic is in those hands, my witch?”
I grimaced. “You know what that word means.”
Avery shook his head. “I know what they use it for. I mean it as a compliment and you know that, my wildfire.” His smile was slow, the kind he got when his prick was hardening.
He returned to stand near me, shirtless and sweaty, soot on his arms and chest. “This should not surprise me,” he mused, placing his ash-covered hands on my waist. “You have always set me aflame.”
I gaped at him. “Dear suffering gods, are you ever not a bull in rut?”
“Are you calling yourself a cow, wife?” He drew my body close to his, and I bemoaned that we were both dirty and smelled of smoke.
I let him kiss me as I was stunned by the fire, but a wave of sadness for Magda flooded me and put out any ardor he had ignited. I pushed him away and said, “Perhaps I should tell you what I think this was.”
He nodded. “I assumed you would not want to tell me. You have shown me so much of your heart already. I understand you may want to keep some things to yourself.”
“Do I tell you too much?” I ventured. Had I been too naked too often with him? Had my outpouring of what was my innermost self been an overindulgence on my part?
He put his forehead to mine. “There is no such thing as ‘too much Robbie.’ Not for me at least.”
We bathed without lingering, stripping off our clothes for washing, although my dress would have to be scrapped for patchwork as it was nearly destroyed. Somehow the skin of my legs had not been injured.
As our dinner had been destroyed, we ate cheese, bread, and apples.
Avery packed his pipe with his regular dried clove, but added lightleaf to it.
As it was a chillier autumn night, he, hesitantly, lit a new fire in the hearth, making it small and manageable.
He lit his pipe from it and puffed, then handed it to me.
We sat at my worktable and passed his pipe back and forth.
When I was loose from the leaf, enough to tell him the full tale of Magda’s death—not just the truth of her burning, but my role in it—I did.
“You have fire magic,” he said when I finished.
I opened my mouth to make a weak protest, but he spoke over me.
“I have seen it. Take it from a godless Ecclestonian. I have just seen it in you, and I saw it in one back home. It exists. You may have your soil skills. Those I think are natural even. What lets you see the doors in god trees is not just Mother Earth or even her at all. It is that fire god. I think your blood was a mercy on the old woman. It was a quick death, likely painless if your memory is true.”
“What did you see in Eccleston?”
“A blacksmith more blessed than you. He could prick his finger and pray aloud for flame, and then the blood would flicker into flame like light on a candle. People claimed it was a sleight of hand trick, but I think it was real. Ever tried that?”
“What did he say?”
“‘Father Fire, I am in need’ or something.”
I went to a box I kept things for sewing in, shears, thread, and needles. I pricked my right forefinger, and we watched a small drop of blood well up on the tip.
“Father Fire, I am in need,” I said aloud, and then I winced and put the finger into my mouth.
“What?” asked Avery.
“It just got very, very hot. I think you’re right, I don’t have the same blessing, but perhaps I do have fire magic. But I need a flame that already burns. I cannot conjure one myself.”