by A. L. Knorr
“I’m not sure I’d be comfortable asking Petra,” I said, taking my hair out of its elastic and shaking the kinks out of it. “But I’d be happy to ask Georjie and Targa for you.”
Basil brightened. “Splendid!”
I put up a hand. “Don’t get too excited. I don’t know if they’ll say yes, especially Targa, she’s extremely private. But I’ll mention it. Okay?”
Basil nodded. “Understood. No expectations.”
As we neared the doors, I slowed my pace, catching glimpses of the two students I was set to coach next week. “Thanks for the lesson,” I told Basil. “I’m going to stay for a few minutes and observe.”
He touched my shoulder by way of a goodbye and left the dojo.
Three pairs of magi occupied the nearest mat; sparring, stretching and goofing around as they warmed up for class. I took a seat against the wall and watched, sipping my water and letting my body cool down.
I meant to keep my eyes on the two students I was scheduled to help, but my gaze kept drifting to the couple furthest away from me: Jade and Dar.
They weren’t sparring, but practicing jumps and some acrobatic moves. Dar’s slender form was fluid as he used his energy economically, and elegantly. He was a first-degree mage, but I could tell he’d reach second-degree skill level before the end of the semester.
Jade was a different story, problematic in an entirely different way to April. I pulled a knee up to my chest and perched my heel on the edge of my chair, taking covert glances at her as I put my hair back up. If she knew I was watching her she’d become self-conscious, maybe even hostile.
She’d slid into a kata, a simple martial arts warm-up of lunges and punches moving through space. Her movements were loose and shallow, her body language screaming that she was unwilling to commit. I wondered why she’d signed up for combat classes, it looked like she wished she was somewhere else. Not so much in her face, as her expression was flat and difficult to read, but her energy was lazy, her posture poor.
When she finished her kata, she joined Dar in drills using pylons and rope ladders. Like a football player, Dar’s movements were explosive and precise, his power meted out beautifully. When he was allowed to add fire, he’d be a force.
Jade started out well but soon staggered. Halfway through the drill she turned an ankle, giving a cry of pain. I cringed and covered one eye. Dar stopped and went over to check on her. She hadn’t sprained it badly, but I knew it had hurt.
Biting my lip at the half dozen bits of advice I wanted to give her, I tensed and almost got up from my seat. Jade chose that moment to look in my direction from where she was seated on the mats, stretching her ankle.
I gave her a sympathetic smile, deciding that if she was half receptive, I’d go over and give her some simple tips that would change her warm ups forever. If she continued building bad habits the way she was, when it came time to add fire, she’d injure herself. Not that any sane instructor would allow her to add fire in her current state.
Jade scowled and looked away, blood rushing into her cheeks. I couldn’t decide what that meant. I’d been expecting her to either flip me the bird or yell something rude across the dojo. She did neither, but she hadn’t sent an invitation either.
Pressing my lips together, I redirected my gaze to the students who had asked for my help, and who were faring much better than Jade in their warmups. I wished Jade hadn’t gone so out of her way to become an enemy. In spite of her rotten attitude, I suspected there was an insecure child inside in desperate need of attention. But it wasn’t my business. You could lead horses to water, some might even drink—this one wouldn’t even come out of the stall. Besides, of all the students in the school who needed help right now, my energies had to go to April. There was no way I would allow Ryan to get her between the sheets. Hell would freeze over first. Jade could fend for herself if that’s what she wanted.
Twelve
Snuffed
Rapid-fire knocks on my bedroom door jarred me from sleep like a hammer striking my temples. Struggling to surface from the depths of a near-death phase of unconsciousness, I tried to stir. My body refused to acknowledge commands from my mostly checked-out brain. A second string of urgent taps cracked my eyelids and shoved my mind reluctantly into a grinding version of first gear.
“Saxony!” An insistent whisper without any apparent gender hissed through my old fashioned keyhole. “Wake up! Please.”
Fighting through sleep-grog, I rolled out of bed with my eyes closed again, feet finding the floor. The cool sensation of the hardwood against my soles brought me into full, shuddering wakefulness as my mind fastened on the urgency in that whisper.
Something was desperately wrong.
The frightened hiss came again. “Saxony!”
No, not frightened. Terrified.
“Coming,” I hissed back and went to the door. Unlocking the bolt, I opened to a set of eyes the size of saucers.
“April?” Warning flags popped up like the heads of ground squirrels. My heart did a belly-flop.
I stepped back as she pushed her way into my room, shutting my door with her back. She stared out of a ghostly face, her irises swimming in a sea of white.
“What’s wrong?” I wanted to touch her but was afraid that if I did, she’d shatter like one of the shadow-men in the VR game.
She slapped a hand over her mouth and continued to stare from over her fingers. Heart drumming in anticipation, my imagination concocted wild disasters to fill the silence April had not yet broken. This was more than a bad dream. Had someone assaulted her? The image of Ryan attacking her because he wasn’t patient enough to wait for their Easter tryst flew at my mind like angry bats.
“You’re scaring me.” I put a hand on her shoulder. “What’s going on?”
Snatching her hand away from her mouth, she breathed the words on an exhale. “My fire is gone.”
Dismay coupled with annoyance crisped my edges like over-baked bread as her words sank in. I sighed. Was that all? “We’ll get it back in the morning. Go back to sleep.”
I made to turn her by her shoulder and get her out of my room so I could go back to bed too but she resisted, shaking her head vigorously.
“You don’t understand. This isn’t like the other times. This is something else.” She made a sudden gasping sound deep in the back of her throat. “What if it’s a disease? Some illness only a mage can get?”
“April, you’ve been dreaming. Please go back to bed.” My mouth stretched wide with a python yawn and my eyes leaked.
April pulled me into the middle of my room where a square of soft moonlight illuminated the floor. “Even on my worst day last year, even after Ryan had busted my heart into a million shards, I could feel that my fire was there. It might have been hiding under the bed, or behind a boulder, but I could still feel it.” She slowed her words down and loomed into my face, begging me to understand. “Listen to me. My fire is gone.”
Eternity crept by as we stood there in that little square of light, staring at one another. Her words went into my ears, her expression registered in my brain. Slowly but steadily, like the turning of a large set of gears behind the face of a great clock, her meaning clicked into place. She didn’t mean it had gone into hiding, she meant it had expired.
I said the only thing there was to say. “That’s not possible.”
“I know.” April let out a sudden half-laugh, half-sob and clapped a hand over her mouth to dampen the sound.
“Try,” I urged her. “Just try.”
She nodded and brought her hands up. Her eyes closed and she relaxed. Nothing happened. Neither could I sense any heat wafting from her body. Her eyelids squeezed and her shoulders tightened as she bore down on the task. Still, nothing happened.
Her eyes opened, bewildered. “There’s literally nothing there. Not even the pain that’s been there since I was born.” Her expression morphed from horrified to hopeful, then to elated. “Saxony, there’s no pain.” Her look changed again, as
though she was frightened that her new state of being was a bad joke and her fire would pop back into existance at any moment and say ‘just kidding.’
I reached for her hands, feeling her skin and looking into her eyes for a glimmer, however faint. We’d never shared a bond, so her skin felt cool to my touch, no different than any previous time. She’d always been the only mage I’d ever met with cool hands. But her eyes—
I released her hands and went to my desk where I turned on the lamp and twisted its head to shine its light on her face. My heart turned over. Her pupils were a soft, velvet black. No hint of fire flickered there. They were just like my brother RJ’s, or my parents, or any other non-supernatural human. Like mine had been before Venice.
“Oh, April.” My voice broke as goosebumps sprang out all over my body. In spite of my disbelief, I knew she was telling the truth. “Shall we try to reignite it?”
“I don’t know.” Words gushed out in a sudden stream as she turned away, raking her hands through her hair and pacing in a circle. “I’ve dreamed of this moment my whole life. You know how much I despised being a mage, how much of a failure I’ve been at it, how I never wanted to come to this place. I’ve always wished I’d been born normal, wished for a regular life and the ability do regular things. Now that it’s happened…”
But just because her fire had gone out didn’t mean she was no longer a supernatural. All it meant was that she was a fire mage whose fire had gone out. As far as I was aware, the first in all of history.
“But you were born a mage.” I watched her pace, my mind darting like a bee from flower to flower, from possibility to possibility and explanation to explanation. “Genetically, that’s what you are. Mages can’t just get rid of their fire. That’s a basic principle. The only way they can get rid of it is if they’re dying and they pass it on to someone else, or when they die. You know this.”
She nodded, eyes wild. “Yes, I do know all that.”
“Shall we try to reignite it?” I asked again.
She stopped pacing and looked at me, uncertain. “Like… you do that thing you did last year? The endowment-thing?”
I nodded, putting a hand out for her to touch.
She took a step back, hands flying up to cross over her heart. Her gaze flashed from my hand to my face and back again. “I’m afraid.”
I didn’t put my hand down. “Afraid that it will work? Or afraid that it won’t work?”
“Both.”
Silence filled the room as I waited, hand out. She took a few steps closer, raising her hand toward mine. Her fingers trembled in the gloom. She pulled her hand back and rubbed her face, letting out a shaky breath. Taking a deep inhale, she reached out again. I could see the conflict in her eyes and body language.
Our fingers hooked and I drew fire down my arm, preparing to endow her. As the fire reached my hand, something screamed at me to slow down. Banking the fire in my hand, I eased it into my fingertips where they pressed against hers.
With a cry, April snatched her hand back and stuffed her fingers into her mouth.
I gasped and jerked my own hand back. “What happened?”
She took her fingers out of her mouth and held them in the light of the lamp. Blisters were already visible on her skin.
“Oh, April,” I rasped, my skin crawling with remorse and horror. “I’m so sorry.”
Her hand trembled as the skin reddened, her other hand wrapped around her wrist and squeezed, as if cutting off the blood supply would dull the pain. Her face was pinched and her jaw flexed as she clenched her teeth. Fat tears oozed from her eyes to stream down her face. Even so, her expression was amazed, full of wonder. She gave a sob that was more surprised than agonized.
“Wow, that really hurts.” She said this like someone observing that a horse was fast, or a view was beautiful. Awed, even respectful.
Mind whirling and guts in a twist, I put an arm around her and steered her for the door. “We’re in over our heads with this business.”
She pressed back against me, resisting. “Where are we going?”
“First, Dr. Price. Then, the headmaster.” Opening my bedroom door, I led her into the corridor.
Still holding her burnt fingers, she choked on another of those strange reverent sobs.
Lexi’s head emerged from a doorway up the hall. “Hey! What’s going on? Sounds like someone’s hurt.”
“Nothing,” I said softly and as calmly as I could. “Go back to sleep.”
Lexi’s gaze fastened on April as we passed in the darkened hallway. “April? You okay?”
April looked up, her eyes full of dazed tears. True to form, she spoke honestly: “My fire died.”
I wanted to hush her, but April was known for having problems with her fire. Maybe it wouldn’t be much of a shock for Lexi.
“Nothing we can’t handle,” I added in a hushed tone.
I could feel Lexi’s gaze on us until we turned the corner at the end of the hall.
At night, the sconces along the corridors of the academy were turned down to a soft amber glow, providing enough illumination to navigate.
As we sped-walked through the building to the corridor of suites where Dr. Price had an apartment, I cast myself back to the time before I was a mage. What did one do for a human who was burned? It wasn’t that long ago I was human myself, so why was it so difficult to remember? Put butter on it? Aloe vera or some kind of salve? Run it under cold water? Dr. Price would know.
The hall seemed to tilt and sway as the reason we were near sprinting through the halls of the academy at night came full circle and boffed me in the face again. April’s fire had gone out. Not only that, she was burnable. What did it mean?
We reached Dr. Price’s door and I rapped with my knuckles. I had to knock a second time, feeling badly for ripping Christy out of her deepest slumber the way April had ripped me out of mine.
The doctor’s sleepy face appeared through a crack. She squinted at us, saw it was students, then opened the door wider. Her hair was mussed and she wore a long-sleeved, button-up pajama top and a pair of black and white striped shorts. I’d never seen her looking so normal. She blinked blearily. “Ladies, what are you—”
I shifted so Christy could see April better in the dim yellow light. She took in April’s teary, agonized but rapturous expression, then her burnt fingers, still held by the wrist in April’s uninjured hand. Even in the dim light, the damage to her skin was visible. In the gloom, what was red looked bruised. A cluster of tight blisters formed on the pads of April’s index and second fingers where she’d touched mine.
Dr. Price gasped and came out into the hall, taking April by an elbow and lifting her burnt hand up so more light fell on it. “What is that? What have you done?”
“It’s a b-b-burn.” April held her fingers closer to Dr. Price’s face.
Christy glanced between us, looking on the edge of severe. “Is this a joke?”
I shook my head. “April’s fire is gone. Like, out.”
The doctor stared, eyes growing wide. “That’s not possible.”
“That’s what I said. But when I tried to endow her to start it again, I burnt her instead. It was an accident. A mage would never burn, so I didn’t expect...” Mist blurred my vision as I relived the moment, the pain I’d caused. I’d never used my fire to hurt anyone before, except for giving Dante the equivalent of a sunburn when I’d exhaled at him with furnace-baked breath.
April stifled a sob deep in her throat, then hiccupped.
That was enough to spark the doctor into action. “One moment.”
She disappeared into her room and emerged again wearing a bathrobe, then she frog-marched us down the corridor. She unlocked the big double doors of the library and pushed through into the cavernous space. The tall diamond-pane windows along the study section threw geometric shadows across the floor. Passing through the foyer and the line of potted palms and ferns, Dr. Price produced another key from the pocket of her bathrobe. Unlocking the door to h
er private office, she gestured for us to enter before her. She followed us in and flicked on a series of wall-mounted lights that were tucked into alcoves.
I’d never seen the inside of her office before, and gaped in surprise. Vaulted ceilings gave the space an air of grandeur. Occupying the front half of the room was a huge wooden desk surrounded by bookshelves and filing cabinets. But behind that—three steps up—a glass wall separated the two levels. On the second level, a door sat ajar. Through it appeared to be a laboratory. Another door to the right of that was not glass, but metal. It was toward that door the doctor led us, April whimpering and sniffing.
With the flick of a switch, an overhead fixture flooded the treatment room with blue-white light. A bed covered with a paper sheet occupied one wall while a sink, a set of cupboards, and two seats sat against the opposite wall. Christy led April to the sink, where she turned on a stream of cold water and had April hold her burnt fingers under it. April’s eyes shut as the liquid poured over her injuries. I took one of the seats beside the wall.
Dr. Price rummaged through a nearby drawer and cupboard, not immediately finding what she was looking for. She muttered something to herself about not having had to treat a traditional burn since university. Eventually, she produced a jar. She squinted at the label through her glasses then set the jar on the counter beside the sink and rooted through another drawer, pulling out a roll of gauze and some medical tape.
The doctor pinched her lips and shot me a fierce look while she prepared April’s dressing. “I don’t know what you girls have been up to. I’d say you’ve been experimenting with alchemy except that chemical burns don’t quite look like this. Have you? You know it’s off limits for first-years. Even if one of you is Burned.”
April and I shared a bewildered look. She craned her neck to look at Christy. “Saxony was asleep when it happened, it’s not her fault. And I’d never mess with alchemy. I have a hard enough time with garden variety flames.” She paused, then added, “Had.”
