by Shannon Hale
It was a difficult climb in the dark, and Enna scraped her hands a couple of times after tripping on jagged rocks.
“Let me carry you,” said Finn.
“No.” She was through being a burden. Besides, the little pain from the scratches was pleasantly distracting her from the cold dread.
The hilltop was flat and paved with smooth stones. Benches surrounded a stone pillar the height of a woman. On top, a brazier blazed with fire.
“It’s their eternal flame,” said Isi. She spoke with Fahil to confirm. “This flame has been burning for over six hundred years.”
Another man had been standing beside the altar. He stepped back as Fahil moved forward. Fahil spoke, looking straight at Enna. His sharp, raspy words seemed to burn her even before she understood his meaning. Isi was slow to translate. Enna shivered, waiting for the sting.
“He says he’s been talking with the others, and they agree the best option is to try to burn the fire out of you, as quickly as possible.”
Enna looked at Fahil. His face was dark, his back to the fire. He was shadow against the light.
“Burn it out,” said Enna. “How will he do it?”
Fahil had a pair of metal tongs. He dipped them into the fire and pulled out a burning coal. The flames pulled inside, pulsing like a red heart within the blackness.
“He’ll place the coal against the tip of your tongue and then you are to squeeze it in your hands. He’ll burn the first word of fire from your tongue and burn away the acts of fire you performed. He believes that then the fire won’t remember you anymore.”
Enna winced. “But the fire is inside of me. . . . ”
“Fahil believes the symbol of this ceremony will cure you,” said Isi. Even in the darkness, Enna could see her face was pale. “Enna, I don’t think you should. We don’t even know if it’ll work.”
“I’m going to do it,” said Enna. “We’ve got to get you home. You’re carrying the heir to Bayern.”
Isi took a step toward her. “But if this does nothing but burn your tongue and hands . . . ”
“I want to do this, Isi,” said Enna. “I’m ready.” She did not know if she believed in this ceremony, and the thought of the pain made her queasy, but she wanted to show Isi that she was willing, that she would atone for what she had done. She had caused so much pain—it only felt right that she should have to sacrifice in return.
“Wait, Enna, don’t.” Finn took her by the shoulders, and she tried not to meet his eyes, afraid to be talked out of her decision. “We can take time, see if you heal on your own. We can.”
Enna felt her eyes prick and burn. Finn awoke some of the sadness inside her, and it choked against the dread lodged in her chest. “We’ve got to get Isi back before the baby comes. And I haven’t got time, Finn. I feel that now.”
“That fire, it’s like it makes you hopeless, Enna, but you can’t believe it. You’re not going to die.”
Enna opened her mouth to protest, then coughed against the rising heat inside her. Her frustration weakened her control, and it rushed through the cracked place in her chest. She wiped her brow and took an unsteady step.
“Isi,” she said.
A wind answered, pushing away the searing heat. When she could see clearly again, Fahil was wide-eyed and jabbering at Isi.
“What is it?” Enna asked.
Isi was listening, nodding, her brows high and her look hopeful. “He didn’t know until now that I knew the wind-speaking. And he says, wind erases things, like footsteps in the sand. He says, even an immense fire can be like a candle flame in the mouth of a great wind.”
“You want to try to blow out the fire in me?” asked Enna.
Isi nodded. “Fahil, he says he’d thought of that, wondered if somehow he could use the rain speech to work against your fire, but that it was too rushed and that he doesn’t know you. To work such things on another, he said, requires understanding and intimacy. Enna, I know you. I could try with wind.”
“It’ll be just like when you send wind to relieve the fever, but . . . ”
“But harder, yes,” said Isi, finishing Enna’s sentence. “Much harder. And different. He says, he’s telling me how I might do it. I have to—surrender in a way to the wind. I think I can, Enna. I’ve felt the temptation before but never knew what would happen.”
“Isi, please try,” said Finn.
Enna nodded. Hope made her tremble.
Finn let her go and withdrew. Enna and Isi stood facing each other, alone on the paved center of the hilltop. The wind started. At first it was like any of the breezes Isi used to cool the fever, but it swelled so that it tore at Enna’s own life heat around her body, pulling it loose and releasing it into the air.
Then it grew stronger.
Her headscarf came loose and her hair whipped around her face. She began to feel a tearing pain. She opened her mouth to scream, but she could not breathe, and the wind rushed into her throat and poured inside her, ripping through her cracked place, gushing through her body. It was taking something away. She felt fear with the pain, afraid that she was losing all of herself. She could not open her eyes, but she reached out and stumbled forward, her hands finding Isi’s. She gripped on to her friend, trying to anchor part of herself before the wind took it all.
Surrender. She tried. But each time she began to release her carefully guarded control of the fire, pain burst from her chest. If it leaves me, I’ll die, she thought, and held on tighter. Her muscles ached and trembled, her chest gushed with heat. She fought and struggled, terrified of losing everything.
Enna became conscious of Isi’s hand trembling in hers. She let go and stumbled away, and the wind stopped short like a held breath. Enna gasped to fill her lungs and sat on the ground. Isi sat beside her.
“I’m sorry, Isi,” she said. “I can’t let it go. I tried. But it hurts, and it seems so wrong, and I’m so afraid there won’t be anything left.”
Isi took deep breaths, then spoke softly. “What do we do?”
Enna shook her head. She knew only that she did not want to surrender, not as she had with Sileph and not as she had on the battlefield. She glanced at Finn, and the look in his eyes struck her so hard, she felt her body reel. He trusted her. He had complete faith that if she thought the wind was not working, then it was so, and she would find another way.
“I don’t deserve you,” she said to him.
Surprisingly, he laughed in good humor. “Enna,” he said, as though she had told a good joke.
Fahil crouched beside Isi and together they spoke in the southern tongue. It sounded like a desperate conversation conveying little hope.
“I’m sorry, Finn,” said Enna. “It might’ve worked, but for me. Surrender. That’s what I’m supposed to do.” Her stomach seized at the thought, and she swayed. “I can’t surrender anymore. I’m so afraid.”
“What are you afraid of?” he asked.
“Dying?” She shook her head. “No, I guess not that. I’m afraid of being the person who let my friends down, of surrendering so that the fire is in charge, the fire that kills, or of surrendering to survive like I did in Eylbold when I was under Sileph’s control. Of losing myself again.”
Finn held her hand and looked at her palm thoughtfully. “I surrendered in Eylbold. They grabbed Razo. They said they’d cut his throat if I didn’t throw down my sword. So I did. That felt right to me.” He met her eyes. “Maybe there’s more than one kind of surrender.”
Another kind. Finn had not given himself away in Eylbold. He had made a choice to save Razo. Fahil’s voice rose in concern, and Enna looked toward them. Isi was blinking a lot, and though she held herself straight, Enna could tell her friend was suffering under the heavy voice of the wind.
“Finn,” Enna said quietly, “Isi’s been bad all this trip, hasn’t she?”
Finn nodded.
“As bad as I am?”
“Well,” said Finn, looking at their friend, “she doesn’t have the fever. I haven’t been a
s worried, you know. But she’s not like she used to be. She’s been tired, and sad.”
Enna felt her cheeks burn hotter in humiliation. In these last months she had scarcely thought of Isi. Her attention was absorbed in herself, in her grand mission that would stop the war, but also in her gift, in the idea that it might make her as special as she hoped to be. And lately, she was taken up in her fever and in her fear of losing what marked her as extraordinary. All this time, why was she not worrying instead about poor, haunted Isi?
As her emotions rose, her control weakened and the heat pushed in, hot hands pressing her from all sides. She did not call to it, did not gather it in, the heat just found her now. She imagined it sensed its language on her skin, the way a blind dog knows its master. It was that unwanted gathering of heat that was so unbearable, as it was the constant touch and speech of the wind that tormented Isi. She stared at Isi as these thoughts pieced together, and she could feel her heart beat harder.
“You learned the wind in one moment, Isi,” said Enna. “It only took one word. You know many languages. You can learn another.”
Isi looked up and seemed surprised by the energy in Enna’s voice.
“What are you thinking, Enna?” asked Finn.
Enna smiled despite the pain. “I can teach her the fire. I thought about it for weeks with Sileph. I think he could’ve learned, and I know Isi can. We don’t need the vellum, I remember everything it said. And fire is a quick language, Isi. It catches onto you and starts to burn.”
“But, Enna . . . ,” said Isi.
“It makes sense. Wind senses its language on you. That’s why it’s drawn to you even when you don’t call it, right? What you need is something that will keep the voice of the wind a step off. Well, why aren’t the tata-rook overwhelmed like we are? The rain doesn’t completely put out their knowledge of fire. If it did, they’d be bothered by the voice of rain all the time. No, both rain and fire are near them at once, tempering each other. Rain quenches heat, fire burns away water, keeping both their voices away until they call to one or the other. Ask Fahil.”
Isi spoke to the older man. “He agrees that this might be so.”
“So,” said Enna with a smile. “That’s fire and rain. Now think of how we work fire and wind together, Isi. Think of that night outside Ostekin when . . . when I sent heat at you, and you just pushed it away with the wind before it became fire. And that night when we camped, when I sent heat to break up your wind and scatter it. They can either build each other bigger or smother each other out. It’s not exactly how fire and water work, but I’m thinking that wind and heat affect each other all the same. If you added my fire to your wind, I think both would keep the other at bay. Wind brushes away the heat, heat changes and scatters the wind, and neither voice would be able to get close to you unless you called. Just like with the tata-rook.”
“Maybe,” said Isi. “But what about you?”
Enna brushed off the question with a wave and leaned closer. Excitement made her forget the fever. “Never mind me. I really believe this will work for you, Isi. Add fire knowledge and the wind can’t press on you so.”
Fahil wondered what Enna had in mind, and when Isi told him, he was quiet a moment, a tender smile on his lips. Enna shook Finn’s tunic front.
“It’s going to work, Finn. I know it is. Isi’s going to be better.”
“Enna,” said Isi, turning from Fahil, “he says it’s a good plan. And he says it could work both ways.”
Enna blinked. “How?”
“I described to him how we worked fire and wind together to chase off those two soldiers, and he thinks our friendship, our closeness, will be a bridge, that we can share the elements with each other. I tried long ago to teach Geric the wind, and it didn’t work. But you already know one language—maybe you can learn.”
Finn sighed with relief. “Good. You should do this, Enna, and no one’s going to lick coals.”
Enna did not know about learning the wind. It seemed so mysterious to her and something so completely Isi’s. But she agreed, determined at least that Isi would profit. The girls sat knee to knee. Fahil stood before the brazier, and Finn sat on a stone watching the girls, his hand on his sword hilt, ready in case there was something to fight.
They began by talking low. Enna wanted Isi to know what she had learned from the vellum. She explained how heat was in the air, where it came from, how she felt it, plucked it, pulled it inside, and the now subconscious gesture of turning the heat into flame inside her chest. Isi tried to explain how the wind felt when it touched her, what it felt like inside when she understood its subtle speech, how she saw and heard and felt the images it carried and yet with a sense that was neither her eyes nor ears nor skin. It was difficult to explain, and after a time Enna realized both had stopped speaking. They held hands, as they had when they faced the soldiers, and Enna became more aware of Isi.
Learn, she urged silently. Feel the heat. Learn it.
She focused on the place in her chest that leaked heat, on the swaths of it that hung around her face, and she tried to will it away from her, to make the heat aware of Isi. Strings of heat stretched between Enna and her friend. It was a strange sensation, almost as if Enna touched Isi but not with her fingers. Then she felt a breeze.
It curled off Isi, around their clasped hands, up Enna’s wrists. The breeze felt as familiar as a touch from a friend. It had a sense of Isi about it. She seemed to know which direction it would flow before it moved, as she often knew what Isi would say before she finished a sentence. She was tempted to try to pull the breeze inside her, as she did with the heat, but she guessed it would not work that way. Feeling that it might be speaking, she tried to listen, straining with all her senses, with her ears and mind and skin, and with that part of her that could feel heat.
The wind grew stronger, as though it sensed her desperation. It beat Enna’s hair against her cheeks. It began to tear at her, and inside the ear-piercing howling there was a kind of silence. She reached out toward the wind again and realized with a start that what she hoped to touch was Leifer. She could see his face so distinctly in memory that it was as though he stood before her, and her heart ached for him. She marveled that at such a moment her thoughts turned to him, and she realized suddenly and with a twisting ache in her heart that she had never wept for his death. The cold rush of the wind made her aware that she was crying now, and her chest thumped with a sob.
All this time, she thought, I’ve been clinging to Leifer. The fire felt like the last tie that bound them together, across life and death.
I can give it up, I can. Inside her, fire raged defensively. Heat stung her skin, leaked from her chest, seemed enough to fill the world. She felt herself slipping again and remembered what Fahil had said: If she sleeps again, she might not wake. Enna refused to faint, focused on Isi, and sent all her thoughts toward healing her. Her hands found Isi’s bare neck and wrist, hoping that just by touch she could spread the heat. She felt some of the fire sigh from her chest. The heat lessened but slid over everything, so that she could not tell which part of the touch was her own hands or Isi’s skin.
The wind did not pause, and Enna knew Isi was sending it at her, insistent. With that place inside her where she kept not only memories of her brother, but the feeling of him, she struggled to listen. The wind thrashed against her skin, and she pushed her senses out toward it, feeling toward it, listening from the inside.
Heat flowed between them. The wind battered them, pushing them closer together. A voice she did not know said, Enna.
She gasped. She wanted to scream back, I’m here! I’m Enna, but she did not know how. Enna, she heard again. The word seemed to enter her where she felt the fire in her chest, then yawn up her throat until it found a place in her mind that understood, that place where she still held Leifer. It was the voice of the wind speaking her name, as cool as a stream bath, soft and plain and easy.
The howling stopped, and the wind slipped into breezes that teased t
he fine hairs of her skin. Slowly Enna opened her eyes. Something was different. She believed they had been sitting there minutes, or perhaps even hours, but surely not long enough for the seasons to change. Nevertheless, the night felt cooler, like a summer’s night in Bayern, rich and fragrant and welcome after a hot day.
Fahil was holding Finn back from going to Enna, but when he saw her look up, he let Finn go. Finn rushed to her side. He smoothed her hair from her brow. His voice was tight with fear.
“Enna, you’re all right? Are you?”
“I think so.” Dizzily, she leaned into Finn’s chest and gripped his tunic. Isi was staring up at a sky prickly with stars. “How are you, Isi? Did it work?”
“I don’t know,” Isi said. “Everything’s so quiet. Did I lose the wind completely?”
Enna closed her eyes and felt around her. The air appeared to be in motion, the heat and the wind moving around each other, swirling together, pushing off, and her sense of them was dimming.
“See if the wind still understands you,” said Enna.
A breeze moved across the ground, lifting dust, snaking up Enna’s leg, against her wrist, then touching her cheek.
“Still there, just not so close,” said Isi. “A breeze came when I beckoned, but not before. Amazing.”
“So, did it work, then? Is it the fire?”
Isi closed her eyes, a line of concentration between her brows. Enna felt like holding her breath. After a few moments, a clump of dead grass on the ground between them sparked with a tiny fire. Isi opened her eyes and laughed.
“And you, Enna? Are you all right?”
The breeze moved through Enna’s hair, and she thought she could hear a whisper—no, not hear, feel. She felt its touch and saw an image and understood it as a word. She could not speak to it, could not ask it to go this way or that. She remembered that such control took Isi much time to learn. But if she strained, she could hear its image speech on her skin, how it carried the idea of what it had touched before to each new contact. A cool finger of air against her cheek and a bright thought in her mind. Enna. It named her. Enna, Finn, our lady, the man of fire and water, the air full of dust.
