by Shannon Hale
She watched Isi’s hand straighten a creased page of her book.
“I know now why Leifer died,” said Enna. “Part of it was just what happens when you use that much fire, but part of it was choice. He surrendered to it and burned big, but then knew he couldn’t live to see what he’d done, so he let himself burn out. It hurts, but not as much as seeing what you’ve made. I would’ve done the same as Leifer.” Her chin trembled and her face tightened to stop the tears.
Isi sighed and took Enna’s hand. “I want you to understand something, Enna, so listen to me. Are you listening? It’s what I was trying to tell you that night . . . before you left Ostekin the last time. I’ve talked with Razo about you and I’ve read a bit, and I think no one could’ve come out of this as well as you. Between Sileph’s power with words and the fire inside you aching for a reason to blaze, how could you resist? And yet you did for so long. Only Enna, stubborn, unyielding Enna. I know you’ve only done what you thought best.”
Enna nodded. She would love a reason to give up the guilt. But she remembered the nascent flame leaving her body and shooting into a soldier, and before it fully became fire and left her awareness, she felt it enter his flesh, enter the soft center of his bones, the speed of his blood, and there burst into fire. She shivered from deep inside.
When Enna did not speak for a time, Isi said, “You didn’t expect to live until now, did you?”
Enna shook her head.
“You still might not.” Isi leaned forward, meeting Enna’s eyes. “You’re on fire, En. You’ve been living inside a fever now for over two weeks. The physicians don’t know what to do. Is it just that you want to . . . burn out? Can you decide not to?”
Enna breathed in and winced at the tearing pain it made in her chest. “I don’t know, Isi. I don’t know how. It used to be that I had to find bits of heat and pull them to me, but near the end, the heat began to find me. It was like it recognized me, sought me out. It took all my concentration to keep it at bay. But on the battlefield, something in me . . . broke. I can’t hold it back anymore. It’s leaking inside me, all into me.”
“Yes,” Isi said thoughtfully.
“Is that how it is with you? Did the wind start to find you, stick to you, and you couldn’t push it back?”
Isi looked about to respond, but they were interrupted by a physician bringing Enna food and a fresh cool cloth for her head. While he ministered to Enna, Isi stared at her book, though her eyes did not move across the lines. Enna slumbered, and when she woke again, she opened her eyes to a man standing over her. Instinctively she hunched deeper into the pillows.
Isi stood up. “Enna, it’s Geric.”
Enna’s bleary eyes resolved the images before her, and she saw Geric standing by her bed, his brow furrowed.
“Should I go?” he asked.
“No, no,” said Enna, trying to sit up. Isi put a hand on her shoulder that told her to relax. “You’re fine, Geric.”
“I think you must’ve had a rough time,” he said, frowning.
She smiled weakly. “So’ve you, I guess.”
“Geric,” said Isi, “I was just coming to tell you. I think I know what Enna needs to heal. I’m taking her back to her house in the Forest. There’s nothing more the physicians can do. I’ve asked a packhorse be prepared with food supplies for us, and Avlado and Enna’s Merry are saddled and waiting.”
Isi waited, smiling a little as though fearing his reaction.
“I’ll go, too,” he said.
Isi shook her head. “There’s too much for you to do right now. The king can’t leave. I’ll be back as soon as she’s better.”
Geric pressed his lips together. “You’re right, but I’m sending an escort at least.”
Isi hesitated, then said, “Fine.” She kissed his cheek, his lips, and then they embraced. At their affection, Enna felt her heart reach and long for something. Sileph, came the unbidden thought.
“Oh,” said Geric, squeezing her tighter, “I’ll miss you, my yellow lady. Don’t be long.”
Isi pulled away and nodded. Her eyes were wet. It made Enna wonder how long Isi intended to be gone.
“Don’t worry about me.” Isi smiled and kissed him again.
Enna thought she was well enough to ride upright, and they left the city in the brightness of an early-spring morning, so unlike the last times she had ridden Merry over frozen midnight fields. She was happy to see the mare again and relieved she had made it home safely, but Enna could not enjoy the ride. A sensation like an empty walnut shell bounced in her chest. Heat clawed like rough fingernails on her skin.
Entering the Forest again was a skin-shuddering relief. The green buds and needles and creaking sounds were as familiar as the smell of her own bed, yet she felt like a stranger. She wiped her brow with the back of her hand. Everything seemed flammable, even her.
A day later, when they reached Enna’s little house, Isi released the escort from their duty. “We’re safe here. Tell the king we’ll send word when we’re ready to return, but not to bother checking for at least three weeks. I’m certain it will take longer than that.”
“Three weeks is long, my queen,” said the head guard.
“Two, then,” said Isi. “Go on.”
Enna frowned. The guards might be oblivious, but Enna could always tell when Isi was lying. Whatever Isi intended, it most likely would take much longer than two weeks.
Isi put Enna in her bed. The familiar smells of pinewood and chicken feathers reminded her so suddenly and profoundly of Leifer, she sat up coughing at the tightness in her chest. She breathed deeply and waved off Isi’s concerned look.
Isi set up some split wood in the hearth. When she turned away to look for flint, Enna set it blazing.
Isi looked at her with creases around her eyes. “Should you . . . ?”
Enna shrugged. “The heat is constantly on me and inside me now. It can’t hurt to expel a little.”
“But not too much,” said Isi.
Enna watched the tame little fire in the hearth, the pleasant ripples of orange and gold. The sound of heat-snapping wood was homey, like the click of knitting needles. She felt like that fire—it seemed lively enough, but eventually the fire would burn through the logs and go out completely. She already felt worn down to embers.
“I brought you here with an idea,” said Isi. “I’ve done more reading while you were sick. Yasid.”
“That kingdom to the south,” said Enna.
Isi nodded. “More than one book mentions a people there called the tata-rook, the fire worshippers. Some claim that the tata-rook have a relationship with fire. If it’s common in Yasid, they must have a secret for using it and not letting it destroy them.”
Enna watched the flames rise suddenly higher, and she thought how the hotter and brighter a fire burns, the faster it burns out. “We’re going there.”
“Yes,” said Isi. “Soon. Tomorrow. Before Geric . . . before anyone knows we’ve gone. We can’t go riding down there with an escort of fifty soldiers. There are roving bands of Tiran still, and with numbers we’d attract attention. If we want to avoid notice and have speed, our best chance is just the two of us alone. And if trouble finds us, I believe we can handle ourselves.”
Enna pulled her gaze away from the fire. “That could take three months. Or four.”
Isi nodded. “Or more.”
“So, you’ll sneak away, leave Geric, travel for months, just on the chance that the fire worshippers might have a cure?”
Isi blinked and said simply, “Yes.”
“No,” said Enna. She did not believe that getting rid of the heat, the fever, the desire, could be so simple. Even the thought of trying caused her legs to shake. “You don’t even know if it will work, and I could die on the way, and you’d be alone and months away from home and you could get hurt—”
“Look at me, queen’s maiden,” said Isi. Enna stopped and looked. Isi was intent, even a little angry. “There’s no debate here. You owe me. This is what I want—
I want you to live. I order you to live. Do you understand?”
Enna nodded. Isi had never ordered her in anything. Her instinct was to fight back, but she found she did not want to this time.
They departed in the dewy morning. Isi had risen early to saddle the mounts and prepare the packhorse. She had managed to bring many bulging bags of food from the palace and a small tent like the one Enna had slept in with Razo and Finn.
Enna’s neighbor Doda stood in the yard to see them off. Isi had given her pleading instructions to put off the soldiers as best she could, and when the king came—for Isi was certain he would come—to tell him what she was doing and that they would be back before harvest.
The first few days they rode under the Forest canopy. The wet, green smells, the growing things, the ceaseless chatter of birds and squirrels, all seemed fresh and new. She had spent far too long in a small winter tent, and even longer subject to the impatient, ravenous desires of fire. She thought how it was the opposite of the slow life of the forest, lichen growing, moss, mushroom, one thing living off another. A tree did not have to die to support a nest.
Enna was battling constantly to restrain the heat and slow the fever’s rise, and she had little energy for conversation. She soon realized that Isi was nearly as troubled as she. Enna watched her, imagining all Isi heard from the Forest breezes, and wondered if the voices of birds or the warm tones of her horse in her mind comforted her or added to the confusion.
At night they camped off the trails. Isi thought it best to avoid people in case they were recognized and word was sent back to the capital before they were out of Bayern. The winds helped direct her on paths where no people lived, and once they crossed the southern border of Bayern, she had a map sketch from the trader’s book they could follow.
After one such day of long travel and silence, they set up camp inside a hollow made by the twining roots of two ancient firs. It was early spring, and the night air was a chill on their skin.
Isi was drinking a tea that smelled like steeped hay. She offered Enna a cup.
“It might help to resist the burning,” said Isi.
“No,” said Enna, “I’m done drinking teas and numbing control.”
Isi nodded. “It helps me—a little. I don’t dare take it during the day. I need to hear the wind to find our way. It’s not so bad out here where we’re alone. People are so much more complicated than trees and birds. But with it I sleep a little easier.”
Enna shivered, despite the fire and the constant burn of her skin. She threw pieces of dead grass at the fire and got angry that they did not fly straight.
“Isi, I can’t pretend that we’re just great friends as always and go on. I tried to set you on fire, and I started burning against Bayern, and you’d be right to hate me.”
Isi looked at the flames a long while, and Enna found she was holding her breath. After a time, Isi looked up.
“It did hurt,” she said.
Enna shut her eyes against the ache.
“I didn’t hate you, Enna, but you know, it took me so long to trust people again after being betrayed before. Then I remembered that it was you who got me to trust again a couple of years back, and that was for a reason. And I remembered that Leifer had burned you, and you forgave him.”
“But why, Isi? Why do so much?”
Isi seemed stunned by the question. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had. When I was completely alone, you were there. I know you must feel so alone right now, and the thought wounds me. But I care mostly because I’m selfish. I don’t want to lose you.”
“I don’t deserve you,” said Enna.
“You’ve had a bad time of it, Enna. Be easier on yourself. I think about all you’ve been through . . . I had no idea what it must be like to have the world of fire nipping at you. I knew you were in deep with the fire, but I had no idea until I went into Eylbold that night that you were also in the clutches of a very dangerous man. I have a feeling it’s extraordinary that you did resist him as much as you did. After a month alone with a man like that, so skilled in people-speaking, I imagine nearly any other person would’ve licked his boots at command.”
Thinking of Sileph still made Enna feel odd, put together wrong, like a loosely stitched doll. She shifted uncomfortably.
“That was a brave thing you did, coming to Eylbold,” said Enna. “I was . . . You made me better with your words.”
“I would’ve been a poor friend not to attempt it. As I recall, a few years ago you stormed through a raging battle just to get by my side so I wouldn’t feel alone.”
“Did I?” Enna raised her eyebrows and smiled. “Yes, well, that wasn’t half-bad, was it?”
“No, not half. That next day after the fighting was the best day of my life.”
Enna grinned. “I remember you about smacked me when I suggested we call the newly formed Forest band the yellow band after you.”
Isi rolled her eyes. “Oh, yes.” She started to giggle. “And you remember when Razo got his javelin from the king, how his hands shook so hard he could hardly hold it?”
Enna laughed, too. “He had fish eyes; he didn’t dare blink in case it’d all go away.”
They laughed much harder than the memory was funny because it felt good to laugh. At first the shaking hurt Enna, and she felt that place in her chest shift uneasily like shards of broken bone scraping one another. But then something found its right place, the pain eased, and the laughter felt more natural.
That night for the first time since the battle, Enna did not worry when she went to sleep that she would not wake up again. The next day the travel was a little easier to bear. On rainy evenings, they set up the tent early and huddled together under its thin eave. Enna found her voice to tell the story she could not before. What Leifer’s death was like, how she felt as though someone had grabbed her insides and ripped her like paper. And why she had read the vellum, how the knowledge had felt more important and beautiful than anything in all the warring world.
She told Isi about Finn and his whispered confession in the tent at night. And she whispered Sileph’s name at last, though it hurt her to admit that she had fallen for his words and lies and looks. She could barely confess that her heart still felt twisted and pained even at the thought of him.
And Isi always listened, never told Enna she had been foolish, never said hollow things like “You’ll be all right.” Enna knew that Isi had seen her own father killed, had lost her family, her homeland, her beloved horse Falada, and still, even in her joy with Geric, she carried an edge of that sadness. Isi saw Enna’s struggle and her sadness, and she understood.
Then one evening the talk stilled, and drowsily, they found themselves playing with wind and fire. Enna set a pile of dead pine needles crackling, and Isi flung a suffocating wind to blow out the fire. Enna pushed out more heat and anticipated Isi’s lighter wind that blazed the fire higher. Enna added heat, Isi added breath, and the fire grew. Each seemed to sense what the other would do in advance, and they worked together like an old couple long accustomed to shared chores. Then, when Isi pulled in a stronger wind, the kind that would take the air away from the fire and kill it, Enna stopped her short. She sent a rush of heat against the swoop of air, and the heat changed the air, split the wind into pieces, hot, erratic gusts that blew themselves away.
“A neat trick,” said Isi.
Enna smiled. “It makes me wonder what else we could do.”
* * *
The next day they crossed Bayern’s border. In Bayern, they had often passed within sight of farmhouses and close enough to Bayern hundred-bands on border patrol that Isi could sense them on the wind. But now they passed through unclaimed land. The grass was coarser, the ground stony, and there were few settlements. Even so, the risk of running into roaming bands of their recently defeated enemies was a dangerous possibility. Whenever Enna found herself wondering of Sileph, she quickly pushed his voice and face out of her mind. Isi looked back over her shoulder more and more. Twice
Isi said she thought a man on horseback followed, someone familiar to her she could not name.
Some days past the border, Enna and Isi were filling their bottles at a stream. Isi stood up suddenly and turned, looking like a woodpecker listening at a trunk.
“What is it?” said Enna.
“Men.” Isi opened her hands, listening to the wind curl through her fingers. “Not the single horseman—two different men. They’re near. The wind was going north, so I didn’t realize until now—”
A man’s voice interrupted her. “There, now, look at that.”
Enna saw two men ride up, both with at least a month of beard growth and sporting somewhat tattered Tiran uniforms. One seemed familiar, perhaps a guard she had seen on one of her raids or even in the Eylbold camp.
“Well, they are not rabbits, but they will do just fine. Three horses, some supplies, and two little girls to add to the treasure.” He smiled at Enna and winked. “Hello there, pretty girl.”
“Go away.” Enna meant to sound commanding, but it came out sounding a bit bored. The tall man laughed. Isi took Merry and the packhorse and hooked their reins onto the strong arms of a shrub. It was then that Enna realized they would not avoid this without a fight.
“Well, well, Pilad, looks like we found ourselves a Bayern girl. One of them is, anyway,” said the tall, more talkative soldier.
The one called Pilad did not seem capable of smiling. He leered at Enna, and his hands fumbled at his sword hilt anxiously. “Yes, that is fine. You there, girls, come on with us, now. It’s up to you if we catch you easy or hard.”
Isi stepped up beside Enna. They looked at each other and smiled a little.
“We’re not running, pig-boys, as you can see,” said Enna, the tiredness in her voice edged with laughter, “but I think you’d best run yourselves if you want your skulls to keep a good hold on your hair.”
The tall man looked at her, stunned, then turned to his companion and guffawed. The other laughed, too, but without smiling. Enna and Isi exchanged glances again. Isi smirked.
“I don’t understand,” said Pilad. “Why do they look all giggly? Do they have warriors hidden in the brush somewhere?”
