Trial by Fire

by Josephine Angelini

  Lily wrenched her arm out of his hand, desperately trying not to cry. She put her right foot down to move away from him, and the pain that shot up her leg like lightning was the final straw. Tears that had been gathering in her eyes tipped over and spilled down her cheeks.

  Rowan turned away from her with a sound of disgust, whispering the words “so manipulative” under his breath. Lily rubbed the tears off her cheeks and felt their salt sting the scratches on her hands. She took a few deep breaths to quiet her crying. There were still those things—the Woven—out there in the dark, and even though she was lost, confused, and hurt, she knew Rowan wasn’t joking. Any sound she made could alert those things and get them all killed. Still dwelling on the Woven, she startled and nearly screamed when she felt Tristan’s hands cup her ankle.

  “This is bad,” he whispered. Lily felt his cold fingers gently prod a spot that was so sore she jerked away spasmodically. “I think it’s broken.”

  Lily looked around at the looming forest, growing desperate. She was quite sure that they weren’t anywhere near a hospital. “Isn’t there anything you can do?”

  “I can get you to camp.” Tristan stood up suddenly. Before Lily could figure out what he was thinking, he’d already lifted her and started carrying her silently through the trees.

  “Wait,” Lily pleaded. She pushed against his chest, trying to get him to put her down. He even smelled the same as her Tristan. “You can’t—”

  “Yes, I can. Don’t worry. We’re nearly at the rendezvous point,” he said, hefting her easily in his arms. “You weigh next to nothing anyway.”

  Rowan had gone ahead. When they caught up to him, he saw Tristan carrying Lily, and even in the dark Lily could read frustration oozing out of him; frustration and some other emotion she couldn’t quite place. Despite his displeasure, he didn’t object to Tristan carrying her, even though he clearly wanted to tell his friend to drop her on her behind.

  The rendezvous point was close, as Tristan had promised. In less than ten minutes, Rowan stopped and called out softly, holding his hand to the side to indicate that Tristan should keep still. A moment later, Caleb came through the underbrush.

  “You made it,” Caleb said, his wide grin showing brightly against his dark skin in the starlight. He and Rowan clasped hands briefly. “What happened to her?”

  Rowan made an irritated sound and brushed past his friend, leaving Tristan to explain.

  “She fell in the dark,” Tristan said hurriedly.

  “She fell?” Caleb repeated, grimacing like he’d never heard anything so silly.

  “Her ankle’s broken.” Tristan shook off Caleb’s next question and continued. “She’s not Lillian—I’m dead sure of it, Caleb. We need to get this straightened out right now. She’s in a lot of pain.”

  “Come on. I’ll take you to the sachem,” Caleb replied reluctantly. He led the way through the small camp, occasionally glancing back at Lily warily. He still didn’t trust her.

  “Isn’t a sachem, like, an Indian chief?” Lily whispered to Tristan, and quickly corrected herself. “Sorry—Native American chief?”

  The only reason Lily knew this was because, being from Salem, she’d had to learn about the Pilgrim settlement in Massachusetts. A lot of land had been purchased from the sachem of the Algonquin tribe, including entire islands, like Nantucket. Lily was pretty sure there were no more Algonquin left in her world, although she knew that there was a high school in Northborough named after them. Not really a fair trade, in Lily’s estimation—a high school for your whole tribe.

  Tristan gave her a puzzled look. “The sachem is the leader of the Outland people in this particular area. Well, what’s left of the Outland people, anyway,” he replied darkly. They passed a few guards, who inspected them carefully. Every time one of the guards recognized who it was that Tristan was carrying, Caleb had to stop to calm him down.

  “What’s an Outland person?” Lily asked while Caleb argued with a few heavily armed men and women.

  “An Outlander is someone who lives outside the walls of the Thirteen Cities,” Tristan replied.

  “You only have thirteen cities in this world?”

  “Why? How many do you have?”

  Lily recalled the vibrant city encircled by those towering walls—vibrant, but not bigger than New York. In contrast, she looked at the old and thick forest that she had battled through for hours, and a strange feeling settled over her. Tristan carried her past an expansive oak that must have been growing for hundreds of years. If there were only thirteen cities in this America, just how large was this forest? This world suddenly felt much wilder then her own.

  “So there are thirteen cities and this big, spooky forest, but what about the suburbs?” she asked in a hushed voice as more and more eyes peered at her as they neared the camp. “Where are they?”

  “What’s a sub-urb?” Tristan replied, his mouth tentatively pronouncing the foreign word.

  Stunned silent, Lily was still trying to figure out how to shape her next question when they entered a large glade. At first, she could only make out vague shapes looming here and there around the clearing. As Tristan carried her closer, she realized that the shapes were perfectly camouflaged tents, made of some kind of unfamiliar material.

  They zigzagged their way in between the tents, which grew denser toward the middle, until Lily finally saw a light. A campfire burned, its light blocked from the rest of the forest by the clever positioning of the tents. The fire struck Lily as an oddly rustic centerpiece to what was otherwise a futuristic-looking camp. It was too small to keep them all warm, and she wondered why they bothered lighting it at all.

  Tristan set her down next to the fire and shook out his exhausted arms. Caleb disappeared into one of the tents, indicating that they should wait there. Lily tried to keep her throbbing ankle elevated as best she could while she waited for him to return with the sachem. Even in the low light, she could see that her ankle was swelling alarmingly fast and already starting to bruise.

  Lily looked up to see a man, about thirty years old, coming toward her with a forceful yet halting stride. He had prematurely graying hair and a pronounced limp, but other than that he looked incredibly fit. The man was flanked by Rowan on one side and Caleb on the other. He wasn’t particularly large—Caleb stood a full head taller—but Lily didn’t doubt his authority. This man was a leader. The sachem stood above her, taking in every aspect of her appearance. His dark eyes drilled into hers for an uncomfortably long time, and Lily found she couldn’t hold his gaze.

  “Look at me, girl,” he snapped when she tried to drop her eyes. Lily obeyed even though his searching look unnerved her. “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Lily Proctor,” she replied.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Salem, Massachusetts.”

  The sachem raised an eyebrow at Lily in surprise. “Massachusetts? We haven’t used that name for this territory in hundreds of years. Not since the Great Witch Trials.”

  Rowan made an impatient sound, and the sachem raised his hand for quiet. “This isn’t Lillian, Rowan,” he said.

  “But it is her,” he argued. “Every cell in her body…”

  “Is exactly the same,” the sachem finished for him. He put a hand on Rowan’s shoulder and squeezed reassuringly. “I believe you and I trust your skill as a mechanic completely. But impossible or not, this girl isn’t the Lillian we know.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Rowan asked pleadingly.

  “Because this girl has never killed anyone,” he said with certainty. “Look in her eyes, Rowan. There’s no death there.”

  Rowan looked away, chewing on his lower lip. “You willing to bet your life on that?” he asked.

  The sachem smiled indulgently. Lily could tell that if anyone else had questioned him this way, the sachem would have lit into him, but for some reason he had more patience with Rowan. She wondered if they were related. They both had the same sweeping brow and strong features, and
they projected a similar strength.

  “We both heard the stories of spirit walking when we were kids, Rowan,” he said gently. “All Outlanders do.”

  “We hear them, and then we grow up,” Rowan replied. “Do you honestly believe that she isn’t Lillian?”

  “Do you honestly believe she is?”

  “I don’t know.” Rowan looked at Lily, and his dark eyes softened with uncertainty.

  “Is this one still powerful?” the sachem asked.

  “There’s none stronger,” Rowan responded immediately.

  “Can she do everything that Lillian can?”

  Rowan shrugged. “Maybe. With training.”

  The sachem crouched down stiffly in front of Lily. An old brace that spanned from the thigh to the calf kept his right leg straight. Something awful must have happened to his knee to require that much hardware, and Lily wondered what it was. “I’m Alaric,” he said, introducing himself.

  Lily nodded once, but was too intimidated to say anything back. Alaric touched her broken ankle with his fingertips, and Lily gasped, tears springing to her eyes.

  “That’s definitely broken,” he said. Alaric removed his hand and stood. “Get to work on that ankle, you two,” he ordered in Rowan and Tristan’s general direction. “And Lily?” he added over his shoulder. “In the morning, I have some questions for you.” Alaric paused to look at Lily, shaking his head. “The shamans were right. Who’d have thought that?”

  The sachem chuckled to himself as he and Caleb disappeared into the dark outskirts of the camp, leaving Lily with Rowan and Tristan. She exhaled slowly and realized that she’d been half holding her breath under Alaric’s intense scrutiny.

  Rowan knelt down at Lily’s feet, avoiding her eyes. He stripped off his jacket and began rolling up his sleeves. His face grew pensive as he considered her ankle.

  “I’ll get the phosphorous and chalk,” Tristan said, and turned to go.

  “And bring iron,” Rowan called after him. “The marrow’s smashed.”

  As Lily watched Tristan hurry off, she barely bit back the urge to call after him and beg him not to leave her alone with Rowan. But as she watched Rowan staring at her ankle, her fears about whether or not he would take this opportunity to slit her throat drained away. He was completely focused on her injury.

  Rowan placed his fingers on her ankle and pressed gently, but unlike everyone else who had prodded her sore spots, he didn’t hurt her. In fact, she felt some of the pain diminish. Rowan’s willstone flared with a strange, oily light, and the campfire behind him pulsed brighter and then dropped to an almost imperceptibly duller intensity. Lily felt heat under her skin—heat and a slackening of the swollen pressure in her ankle. She felt something like hot fingers prodding the muscle and sinew around her bones. Then the hot fingers dropped deeper and started rearranging the bones themselves like they were nothing more than another kind of stiff tissue. It didn’t hurt, but the sensation was so foreign and off-putting that she tried to pull away from Rowan’s touch.

  “Easy,” Rowan said, his deep voice rumbling.

  “It’s too weird,” she said, still trying to shy away.

  His eyes darted up and met hers. Lily saw fire in them—actual flames licking around his irises.

  “Holymarymotherofgod, your eyes are on fire!” Lily blathered.

  Since she’d been brought to this alternate Salem, she’d seen necklaces glow and huge doors swish open automatically, but this was the first time she’d seen anything that was flat-out impossible. Lily had never believed in magic, not even when she’d first found herself transported to this alternate universe, but she believed in it now. Like it or not, she’d just felt magic in her bones.

  The fire in Rowan’s eyes went out, and the gentle pressure of his fingers suddenly hurt. He released her immediately, almost as if he could sense that he was hurting her, and scooted away.

  “You’re not Lillian,” Rowan said roughly.

  “No, I’m really not,” Lily replied, taking the opportunity to scoot away from him, too.

  They stared at each other, both regarding the other fearfully.

  “She did it,” Rowan said, breathless. His eyes left Lily’s and he stared blankly at the ground. “How?” His eyes darted back up to Lily’s and rested there for a moment.

  He fell silent until Tristan returned, he and Lily staring at each other skeptically.

  “What’s going on?” Tristan asked. He dropped a pack on the ground between them, ending the staring contest. “Lily? Are you okay?”

  “It’s not that,” she replied. She motioned to Rowan with her chin. “He believes me now, and it’s freaking him out.”

  Tristan turned to Rowan and shrugged. “I tried to tell you.”

  “Yeah, I know you did,” Rowan replied, with a look that said Tristan didn’t need to rub it in. “Let’s get to work.”

  He started rummaging through the pack Tristan had brought and pulled out a few small lumps of brightly colored stone and a few handfuls of leaves, flowers, and something that looked like a gnarled bit of beef jerky. Lily had studied enough chemistry and botany to know that the yellow lump of rock had to be the phosphorus; the white one chalk; and the red iron. The flowers she wasn’t too sure about, but she thought they might be arnica. She knew arnica was a homeopathic remedy for swelling and muscle cramps, and she recognized the simple white flower from the picture on a tube of gel she used in the hospital whenever she ached from lying in bed too long.

  “I’m going to have her do it,” Rowan said to Tristan as he unpacked a small pot and a mortar and pestle.

  “She has no idea how,” Tristan replied.

  “I’ll guide her.” Tristan started to object, but Rowan cut him off. “She resisted me when I was prepping her, and she’ll only fight me harder the deeper I go. If I try to do it, she might block me entirely, and it won’t heal at all.”

  Tristan stared at Lily for a moment, his eyes narrowed with concern. “She doesn’t even have a willstone.”

  “She doesn’t need one,” Rowan replied confidently. “All she needs is for me to point the way.”

  “It’s never been done.”

  “But it’s still going to work.”

  Rowan and Tristan stared at each other, long and hard. Lily got the strange sense that they were still speaking to each other, even if she couldn’t hear what they were saying.

  Without another word, Tristan turned and started scraping off tiny bits of the phosphorus, iron, and chalk. He began grinding them down to dust with the mortar and pestle while Rowan plucked bits of the herbs and put them in a small pot of water he’d set to boil on the edge of the fire. Their actions were quick and precise, as if they had been trained to do this. After a few moments of orchestrated movement, Rowan held out his hand to Tristan, who poured the ground minerals into his palm, like a nurse handing a surgeon a scalpel.

  “Here. Inhale this,” Rowan said, holding his hand under Lily’s nose.

  “What’s it for?” she asked, already inhaling. Rowan gave her a quizzical look.

  “You’re just going to inhale it without waiting for an answer?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow at her. Lily squinted back at him. His face had started to blur.

  “Please don’t tell me I’m going to pass out again,” she pleaded.

  “Focus,” Rowan said. He brushed his hands together in the direction of the fire, sending the leftover particles into the flames. The fire shot up, changing color as it burned the phosphorus, calcium, and iron. Lily’s vision cleared.

  She had no idea what Rowan wanted her to focus on, so she just stared at him and Tristan. The two of them sat cross-legged next to the fire, waiting. Rowan stared at the little pot of water, absentmindedly touching his willstone with the tip of his middle finger. The pot boiled, and he wrapped his hand in the sleeve of his jacket to remove it from the flame. He turned to Lily.

  “Drink,” he said, offering the red-bottomed pot for her to take.

  “But … it’s burnin
g hot,” she said, not understanding what he wanted her to do.

  “Heat is energy. You are a crucible. Take this cauldron, drink this brew, and use the energy to change the elements I’ve given you into blood, marrow, and bone.”

  Lily gaped at him.

  “Do it now, Lily.” He shoved the small cauldron into her hands, and tipped the rim toward her face. Left with no other option, she gulped the liquid down rather than let it splash over her face and hoped that if she got it over with quickly she’d suffer less.

  Lily didn’t feel a thing. The hot brew didn’t scald her tongue or mouth. Her hands weren’t singed. She turned the ashy cauldron around in her fingers, feeling pulsing warmth, but not pain. She saw Rowan’s willstone flare as he moved closer to her.

  “I’ll help you guide it,” he murmured, his eyes half closed.

  Rowan reached out and took her shoulders, slowly drawing her closer to him until they were nearly pressed against each other. The slippery, silver light of his willstone pulsed in the scant inch that was left between them. Rowan pushed her back until she was lying down, and leaned over her. The light from his willstone began flashing over her body and arcing down in little tendrils, like lightning.

  Lily felt a tingling storm in her body that drew the heat from the brew in her belly down to her ankle. When it reached her injury, the heat burst into life and crawled like fingers of fire under her skin.

  Suddenly, Lily could see the damage. She saw the smashed bone, the torn ligaments, the shredded blood vessels, and she knew what she had to do. She told the fingers of fire to put the broken bits back together, to use the free elements that she’d inhaled to mix with the collagen, proteins, and minerals that came from the brew to knit her body back together. In seconds, Lily’s ankle reassembled.

  “Now. Call out the fluid—the swelling and the blood. Remetabolize it,” Rowan whispered, his soft mouth brushing against her jawbone as he spoke. Lily saw what he meant and released the pressure, calling all the fluid back to her organs to be recycled.

  The light from Rowan’s willstone went out, and he sighed, drooping on his elbows for a moment before he pushed himself away from her. Lily sat up. She turned her ankle around effortlessly, drawing a circle with her big toe. It was as good as new.