Fire Lines

by Cara Thurlbourn

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he tells her, “it’s dangerous.”

  Maya huffs.

  “Alright, I won’t argue with you,” Kole replies. Then he notices Niri. “Maya, no. He can’t…”

  I walk over and crouch beside Niri. He looks terrified.

  “Kole,” I whisper, “he has no one else.”

  Kole breaks his eyes away from Maya and looks down at Niri. Bael died saving him from the fire. Niri still has his mother, but in a lot of ways he’s an orphan. Just like Kole.

  “Alright,” Kole whispers, as though he’s read my thoughts. “He can stay.”

  Lighting the fire and helping Garrett hollow out a chunk of wood to use as a pot, I feel like our group has splintered in half. Alyssa and Tsam are on one side of the fire, sitting next to each other and muttering over the map. Ava, Kole and I are on the other. Garrett is in the middle, trying to lighten the mood but, for the first time, failing miserably.

  When Alyssa stalks off to try and find some plants we’re able to eat, I follow her.

  “I’m sorry. I know you didn’t want to do this,” I begin.

  She shakes her head. “It’s not you,” she says. “I mean, it’s not this. I’m—” She stops, as if she’s not sure whether she can trust me. She looks around, then lowers her voice. “It’s Ava.”

  “Ava?” Her behaviour has been troubling me too, but since we left the mountains it has slipped further and further from my mind.

  Alyssa leans back against the nearest tree trunk. “Émi, what I’m about to say – it’s going to sound… Well, mad. Like I’ve got something against her, but I’m just…” She looks at me, her eyes pleading. “He’s my brother.”

  I move closer and put my hand on her shoulder, hoping she knows that I won’t judge whatever it is she’s about to tell me.

  Alyssa smooths back her hair, looking suddenly vulnerable. “Garrett’s so under her spell. He thinks she’s acting the way she is because she’s troubled. I’ve tried to see her the way he does. But I think it’s more than that.” She pauses, trying to read whether I’m going to defend my sister. “And I think, deep down, you feel it to.”

  I shift from one foot to the other. I should stick up for Ava, and yet…

  “Go on,” I tell her.

  “There’s a drug used by people on the Islands: Wrack. I’ve never seen it, just heard about it. Some years ago, the Watchers had awful trouble keeping it out of the outlying villages nearest the Islands. It’s made from the seaweed on the black beaches, thick like tar. They drop it onto their palms and it dissolves into the skin, into the blood…”

  I tilt my head at her. What does this have to do with Ava?

  Even quieter now, so quietly I can barely hear her, Alyssa says, “When people have been using it a lot, their skin starts to turn black. First their hands, then everywhere.” Alyssa waves her hands in my face. “The gloves, Émi. She won’t take them off. Even out here, where it’s swelteringly hot. She won’t stop wearing the scarf either. And the way she was when I ditched her pack… as if she really needed whatever was in there.” Alyssa shakes her head. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m seeing things because I don’t like her.”

  I look over my shoulder, half expecting Ava to jump out of the trees and accuse me of betraying her. It doesn’t make sense, and yet… it does.

  I take a deep breath. “Let’s assume you’re right. How would Ava have access to this stuff, if it’s only found on the Islands?”

  Alyssa shrugs. “I don’t know. I hope I’m wrong. But if I’m not… Garrett can’t see it, won’t see it, even if it’s right there in front of him. I can’t let him get hurt, Émi.”

  She is frantic now, her hands clenching and unclenching. I promise her I’ll keep an eye on Ava.

  “And you’ll try to see beneath the gloves?” she prompts. “Because that’s the only way we’ll know for sure.”

  “I’ll try,” I promise, giving her a hug even though I know she hates it.

  Later, around the campfire, I reel back through my memories of Ava. I can see why Alyssa thinks Ava is hiding something, but an addiction to something only found on the Islands, when she hasn’t left the mountains or spoken to a soul other than Søyen for nearly seventeen years? It’s not possible.

  I’m staring at Ava from across the fire, watching her fidget with her gloves, trying to think of a way to see what lies beneath them, but Tsam’s sullen mood is distracting me. He has barely spoken to me since we left Tarynne and seems to be doing everything he can to avoid me. Now, he is sitting next to me but his body is stiff and unfriendly.

  I nudge him in the ribs. “Cheer up, we’re not dead yet,” I say, waiting for him to smile, but instead he stands and prods a stick in the fire.

  I’m still trying to understand exactly when Tsam got so very far away from me, when Alyssa catches my eye and nods at the other side of the campfire. I follow her gaze and notice that Ava is slipping away from us, into the undergrowth. Seconds later, Garrett follows her. Alyssa moves as though she’s about to go after them but I hold her back.

  “Let me.”

  Beyond the fire, the space between the trees is almost pitch black but the hum of Garrett’s voice guides me through. Just beyond the trees, out in the open, Garrett and Ava have stopped. He is holding her hands..

  “Ava, you can trust me,” I hear him say. “I want to help.”

  There are tears in her eyes. A tightness tugs at my stomach and I feel guilty for thinking the worst of her. Alyssa is wrong. Ava is simply nervous, fragile, like my mother after my father was taken away. Garrett is the right person to help her; he is kind and good and happy. All the things she needs.

  I’m about to turn away when Ava starts sobbing, loudly. Garrett rubs her shoulders and stoops, trying to encourage her to look at him but this only makes her sob even louder. Eventually, she pushes him away.

  “You can’t help me!” she cries.

  A smile dances across Garrett’s lips. “Of course I can. Nothing can be that bad…”

  Ava stares wildly at him for a moment, then grabs at her scarf and pulls it from her face, ripping her gloves from her hands and throwing them to the ground too. She holds her palms out, shaking them at Garrett as if there’s something stuck to them.

  “Look at me!”

  Garrett’s smile collapses. He seems rooted to the spot, unable to move. Ava’s hair is much darker than I remember, longer and greasier. But it isn’t her hair that disturbs me, it’s her hands. They are black, gnarled and wizened as if they belong to a person who is long dead. The blackness stretches up past her wrists, almost to her elbows.

  Ava steps a little closer to Garrett. I think she’s going to pick up the scarf, but instead she scoops her hair back and exposes her neck. The blackness is there too, creeping up towards her mouth and wrapping itself around her throat. The whites have disappeared from her eyes, so that they seem like nothing more than two deep round holes in her face, as if I’d see right through to her skull if I looked long enough.

  Garrett gulps and lowers his eyes to the ground. Ava’s face contorts with shame. Tears are streaming down her cheeks and her hands are trembling. Garrett looks up then and rushes towards her, wrapping her in his wings.

  “It’s alright, everything will be alright,” I hear him murmur. “I’ll help you. We all will.” He is facing me now. For a brief moment, I think that his eyes lock on mine so I duck back into the shadow.

  I am planning to run to Alyssa, tell her she’s right and ask her what to do, when Garrett makes a gurgling sound. His wings droop and he stumbles backwards. His pupils are unnaturally wide. He slumps forward. A trickle of deep red blood escapes from the corner of his mouth and runs down his chin.

  I feel myself swaying and bite down hard on the scream that’s trying to escape, slamming my hands over my mouth and forcing myself not to look away.

  Ava pushes herself free from Garrett’s slumped embrace and he falls to the ground. As he does, someone appears behind him. My eyes ar
e so blurred with tears that I can’t see who it is. But then I blink. And there he is, just as he was in Silvana’s vision. Tall. Taller even than Kole. And angular. His movements are slow and controlled, as if he’s floating above the ground. His black wings are folded flat against his back and his lips are twisted into a smile that’s almost a growl. Ava steps back and lowers her head. She doesn’t look afraid. Mahg doesn’t acknowledge her, just stoops down and kicks Garrett over onto his stomach.

  In the middle of his back, the hilt of Mahg’s dagger is barely visible between his snow-white feathers. Mahg pulls his weapon free. He raises it up to his face, slides his finger across the blood-stained blade and licks its tip. My stomach lurches up into my chest. Garrett’s wings are red now. Blood red. Dead red.

  Mahg moves closer to Ava. “Well done, my little flower,” he drawls. “I know that was hard for you.”

  Shaking from head to toe, Ava scrambles to kneel at his feet, holding out her hands. “Please…”

  Mahg takes a small brown bottle from a strap around his neck and tips it upside down, squeezing two drops of thick oily liquid onto each of her palms. It sizzles as it meets her skin and the dark veins on her neck begin to fade.

  “Thank you, thank you,” she whispers, her eyes closed, swaying slightly, no longer shaking. When Mahg pats her head and tucks the bottle and its strap out of reach, Ava tugs at his knees, “Just two? You said…”

  “Be patient, my love. There will be more when we get home. Now, come. You’ve been brave but there is one more thing we need to do. Will you do this for me? This one last thing?” He tucks a finger under her chin as he talks to her, smoothing her hair with his other hand as he blinks slowly.

  Ava nods, her eyes fixed on the brown bottle.

  “Good girl, now give me your hand…”

  I manage to hold down the stream of hot violent nausea until I’m just a few metres from our camp. Then, finally, I allow myself to retch into a bush. When I straighten up, my legs are quivering so badly I’m not sure I’ll be able to walk, but I can hear the crackle of our campfire and I know I’m almost there.

  Alyssa sees me first and rushes to my side. “Émi, what’s happened? You’re shaking.” She glances past me, expecting to see her brother.

  I try to speak but nothing comes out.

  Alyssa’s eyes flash. “Émi,” she says. “Where’s Garrett?”

  I feel the nausea rising again and force a slow deep breath. I make myself meet her eyes. “Garrett… he’s…”

  “What, Émi?”

  The words come out before I can stop them. “He’s dead, Lyss.”

  Alyssa jolts backwards. Tsam has arrived beside us and asks what I’m talking about. Kole asks where Ava is. Maya and Niri shrink back into the trees. My ears are ringing and I feel like my head is being pushed under water. Just as think I’m going to pass out, Kole tells everyone to be quiet and makes me sit down.

  “Émi, what happened?” He’s holding my hand but I can’t feel it. All I can see is Garrett’s face and that trickle of blood.

  I inhale and beg myself to hold it together. “Ava was crying. Garrett was comforting her. Mahg came out of the shadows. He stabbed him. From behind. Garrett didn’t have the chance to defend himself.” I pause. I don’t want to tell them about Ava but I know I have to. I tell them that Ava’s skin was black and scaly, that the inky thick veins in her neck had been hidden by her scarf, that Mahg dropped black liquid in her palm and she begged him for more, that he must have been following us all along, that Ava must have lead us here on purpose. That she is on his side.

  Alyssa’s lips are so narrow they have almost disappeared. She was right about Ava.

  My voice cracks. “She let Mahg…”

  “Let him what?” Tsam asks me.

  “He cut off her finger,” I say quickly, so I don’t have to absorb it. “So it would look like there was a struggle, like she was taken and Garrett died trying to save her.”

  Alyssa hugs herself with her wings, rocking as she stands, looking as if she might fall down.

  “Did you check…?” She can’t get the words out. “Are you sure he’s…”

  I think of Garrett’s face, the blood. I remember turning his body over and holding my cheek next to his lips. Not a single breath. I wish I’d managed to comfort him. I wish he’d said a few last words that I could repeat to Alyssa. But, just like that, he was no longer there.

  I expect Alyssa to bombard me with questions, to scream and kick and break things, but she becomes very quiet. She stands in front of me, mute, as though she has caved inwards. After a long, vibrating silence, Tsam takes her hands and guides her to a spot by the fire. She stares at it. She isn’t crying but Tsam is. They stare together and don’t move. I am with Kole, still trying to remember how to breathe and, now, there’s no Garrett to sew us all back together.

  “Where did they go?” Kole asks me.

  “North, I think. He said they were going ‘home’…”

  Kole frowns and it looks almost painful. “I don’t understand…” he says, under his breath. “Mahg thought you and Ava were among the orphans.”

  I shake my head. I can’t line up the pieces, either. They don’t fit.

  “He knew her. She knew him. What we saw – everything he told Silvana. It must have just been for show.” I remember how readily Ava agreed that we should go to the Islands and save the girls… “I thought she was on my side. But she tricked me.”

  Tsam looks up from the fire. His eyes flash and I can’t tell if it’s the reflection of the flames or his anger finding its way to the surface. “And you fell for it.”

  “I…”

  “The gloves…” Alyssa whispers, covering her face with her hands and starting to sob.

  “If you’d listened to me, Émi…” Tsam is shouting now. He is incensed, grief channelling itself into anger and seeping from his pores, burning me like acid. I haven’t seen him like this before and normally I’d shout back but he’s right.

  I did this.

  I pushed for us to go to the Islands, to save the girls. And now Tsam’s best friend is dead. Alyssa’s brother is dead. Garrett is dead. So, I let him shout at me. I let Tsam tell me we should have left Ava in the mountains, that she probably killed Søyen, her own father, that she’s evil and all is lost. I let him say that he wishes he’d never laid eyes on me, that he should have left me to rot in Nhatu, that I probably don’t feel any of this because…

  “You’re not even human!” he spits.

  Finally, the fight goes from his eyes. He knows he has gone too far.

  I’m not crying any more. I’m beginning to feel like the old me. The me who let Falk leer and humiliate. The me who said ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir’ and pretended it was normal to be treated like an insignificance.

  Yesterday, saving the elephants with my magick, I felt as though I could do anything. I believed I was made for something greater. I believed Ava and I could storm the Islands, rescue the orphans, defeat Mahg and free the people of Nhatu. Just like that. I was naive. I underestimated Mahg and overestimated myself.

  I feel undone, but I can’t show it.

  I straighten my shoulders and calmly, as if he is merely an acquaintance, ask Tsam if he would like me to stay with Alyssa whilst he and Kole fetch Garrett’s body.

  I don’t know whether Tsam can tell that he has broken us, whether he knows he has sliced through whatever was there and cast it aside. I don’t look into his eyes long enough to find out. Instead, I go and sit beside Alyssa, and smother myself in her grief.

  It doesn’t take long for the boys to fetch Garrett back to us. They lower his body quickly to the ground, trying to stop Alyssa from seeing that his feathers are clotted with blood. But it’s too late.

  She walks over to him and reaches into her pocket, taking out something small and red. It’s Garrett’s harmonica. “I found it in the snow, after the avalanche. I was saving it for…” Her voice fractures. “I don’t know what I was saving it for.”
>
  Kole and I stand beside Niri and Maya while Tsam and Alyssa stretch out their wings and kneel beside Garrett’s body. Without making a sound, they reach their hands up to the sky then down to rest on Garrett’s chest. They do this four times, then they fold his arms across his body and Alyssa tucks the harmonica into his left hand. Tsam sits quietly while Alyssa strokes her brother’s pale cheek. The air is so still that when she finally speaks, her words echo through the air.

  “What am I supposed to do, Garrett? You’re my big brother. You…”

  Tsam takes Alyssa’s hand. He tries to speak but nothing comes out. Alyssa looks up at the sky, where dawn is preparing to break.

  “We should fly him back to Tarynne,” she says. “Hitra and Sayah may still be there. They need to know what’s happened. They need to know Ava is with Mahg.”

  Tsam nods in agreement, but Alyssa doesn’t look at him – she looks at me.

  “Émi, you’re not coming back with us, are you?” There’s no anger or judgement in her voice. She’s guessed what my plans are.

  Tsam stiffens but doesn’t turn to me. I feel Kole by my side and I know he’ll carry on if I do.

  “I don’t understand any of this,” I tell her. “But if it’s all because of me, I have to put it right. I have to go on. I have to stop Mahg. And Ava.”

  Twenty-Three

  Tsam and Alyssa are still crafting a stretcher from branches when Kole and I set off. He tries to send Maya and Niri back to Tarynne but they won’t go and, secretly, I’m glad.

  When I first left Nhatu, there were five of us, then six, now two: me and Kole. The one person I thought I’d distrust for the rest of my days is the only person who will help me. And Tsam, who was supposed to always be here, isn’t.

  Before we leave, Alyssa slips the map into my pocket. She can’t quite bring herself to meet my eyes but her hand lingers on mine before she takes it away. I had expected her to despise me, but perhaps Tsam despises me enough for the both of them; he doesn’t even look up to say goodbye.