Playing with Fire (Book 1 of the FIRE Trilogy)

by Devika Fernando

They sat in silence for some time, their legs touching, each looking thoughtfully off into the distance and into themselves.

  “Joshua?”

  “Hm?”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Something personal?”

  She felt him tense beside her.

  “If you have to.”

  A giggle burst out.

  “Oh come on, I’m not going to torture you with thumb screws, it’s only a bloody question.”

  A corner of his mouth lifted up in a rueful grin.

  “Don’t forget that I’m all ice and cold. All of this…this sharing of thoughts and personal information, allowing someone close and getting involved in their life feels strange to me. It’s a new experience. I’m not made for intimacy or social interaction.”

  With his last sentence, he stared directly into her eyes, face and voice serious, issuing a warning.

  Somewhere deep inside, the warning was noticed and set off alarm bells.

  Felicia frowned. It all made perfect sense, of course. But wasn’t she fire? Couldn’t she make the ice thaw and the snow melt and the winter sky brighten up?

  The matter on her mind was too important to dwell on this.

  “The thing is, I want to know how you learned all you know and can do. Who helped you? How did you find it all out? What did you experience?”

  Sudden movement oddly left her feeling colder than his cool presence had. He got up and moved a few paces away to lean against the tree, but his gaze was on her.

  “You do realize you haven’t asked me one question but several?”

  She shrugged and grinned.

  “It all boils down to one.”

  He sighed.

  “It does. And I guess you should know. I’d want to, if I were in your place.”

  Drawing her knees up and resting her chin on them, her hair a curly veil all over her body, she prepared to listen intently.

  “I noticed early on that I was… different. It began innocently enough. Where the other children huddled together for warmth, were always sniveling and shivering and prepared to do anything for a place near the fire, an extra blanket or a hot drink, I didn’t mind. I didn’t feel the permanent cold and I kept to myself. With time, I understood that it made me superior to them in some way, that I could gain favor with our care-takers by volunteering for work outside and by not complaining constantly like the others did. I began to experiment.”

  For an instant, his face closed like a book while he dwelled on past memories, his lips pressed into a thin, hard line. She used the chance to give way to her curiosity.

  “But wait, what children do you mean? And why do you call your parents care-takers?”

  His eyes flashed on her, cold and menacing like a predator’s. The atmosphere around him filled with… with what, anger? If she hadn’t been so keen to know more, she would have been scared.

  “You don’t have to know.”

  She drew herself up.

  “Hold on, hold on, that’s not fair. You promised me an answer and…”

  “I do not make promises. Ever. Remember that.”

  He pronounced every word separately, biting the syllables out with a growl in his voice. Divulging information about himself sure unsettled him. If he thought all that fierceness would deter her, though, he underestimated her temperament. In order to get what she wanted, she did what came natural to her at the moment: invade his private space, battle the cold with heat.

  She strode over to him, more confident on the outward than on the inside. Automatically radiating heat to pierce the shield of cold he had cloaked himself in, she stepped right up and glared into his face. Grabbing one of his hands for a second before he tore it away, she insisted, “Promised or not, you admitted it yourself that I have a right to know and it could be useful for me.”

  To his credit, he didn’t move away from her. Instead, he met her stare with one of his own, his grey-blue eyes narrowing, his jaw clenched.

  “You keep misunderstanding me or deliberately turning my words on me. I didn’t speak of any right to know. As far as I am concerned, you don’t have any claims to stake or any rights or requests. I am here on my own free will and I am under no obligation to help you. I could walk away right now and I wouldn’t be to blame. I saved your goddamned life, and that was in no way a duty, maybe not even something you deserved.”

  She gasped, stung by his harsh words as if he had slapped her in the face.

  “Fine,” she spat, “If that is what how you see it, then I’m out of here. I can walk away as freely as you. I don’t need a teacher who doesn’t bloody know how to treat a student. Seems to me you don’t have a thing to teach me, and just want to make yourself more mysterious by dropping a hint here and there and prancing around on your high horse.”

  Throwing her head back defiantly, she turned on her heel and walked into the forest.

  The baby dragon inside her glowed with satisfaction, flapped its wings and coughed a flame up her throat. It gave her face a ruddy shine, and made her curls sparkle in a coppery orange tone.

  There was another part of her, however, that felt like crying. Why did they have to fight when moments ago they had been getting closer than ever? Was it a case of fire against ice instead of the famed ‘opposites attract’?

  Before she had taken more than a dozen steps, it got cooler around her. His hand was on her arm, jerking her to a stop and spinning her around so forcefully that she stumbled against his chest. Electricity hissed at the touch, and for a bizarre instant, she wanted nothing more than to kiss him again, although frustration and disappointment were boiling inside her. His face had lost some of its iciness and fury, and looked more human.

  “Come on, don’t huff and puff and storm away all worked-up. I said I could walk away, not that I would… or that I want to.”

  She continued to glare at him, but swallowed back a spiteful remark. If there was a slight chance he’d relent and reveal, she could handle her wounded pride.

  He sighed, not loosening his grip, pulling her snug against his body as though he enjoyed the feel of it as much as her.

  “This isn’t easy for me. There was a time when I went back and back to those bitter memories and couldn’t break the circle. I finally overcame it, and now I hate to look back. This is the first time that I make an effort to remember, and to talk about it.”

  He paused, drew himself together.

  “Nobody knows.”

  She could feel herself softening. There was a hint of pain in his voice, although his eyes were a blank mask and he was an expert at remaining cold.

  “I don’t need half-baked truths and hints. I want the whole story because it’s my only chance at help. You’re the one who’s always telling me to learn. Don’t you think there is a lot to learn in what you hide from me?”

  A dry, totally mirthless chuckle escaped him. He let her go and stepped back, making her fight the urge to close the distance and press herself against him.

  “Sure as hell, there is a lesson in my past.”

  He ran his hand through his fair hair in a rare gesture of insecurity, pointed his chin toward their place not far from the river and started walking.

  Her feet moved without her conscious decision. When they had resumed exactly the same positions as before, he folded his arms across his chest and shot her an unreadable look.

  “Have mercy on me, unruly student.”

  There was an undercurrent of self-deprecating humor to his tone that was instantly replaced with a more raw and honest undertone.

  “Sharing confidential things with you is a first and a fight for me. I’m going against my true nature here, try to understand.”

  She acknowledged it must indeed be hard for him, for she hadn’t seen him like this before.

  “I’m going against my true nature every day. And that won’t change unless I know more. Try to understand,” she said, in a surprisingly calm voice. Clearly it took him by surprise
too. Emotion flickered across his face, and he lost another bit of his statue-like hardness.

  With a resigned sigh, he continued with his story.

  “I’m talking about children and care-takers because I was…am…an orphan. I don’t know anything about my parents, not their names or where they came from or what they used to do, whether they loved each other and lived together or why they wouldn’t have me. As far back as I can remember, I had been living in an orphanage in Romania. Vaslui is the poorest county in the desolate region called Moldavia, full of villages where the people are almost as poor as animals. It mostly consists of barren planes and when the icy winds from Russia blow during winter and most of the other seasons, the weather is as harsh as it can get.”

  Instinctively, Felicia shivered, as if she could feel the cold.

  “You don’t need to know more details. Let me tell you that the orphanage was a rat-hole more than a shelter for homeless children. Constant cold, never enough food, no affection, barely any education, hard work at a nearby farm. It was a joyless life, but somehow I made it through everything and was probably better off than all of them. The weather didn’t worry me. And as I told you, I began to experiment with growing age.”

  Joshua heaved a sigh and rubbed his eyes vigorously as if he could erase the memories like that. For a moment he looked troubled, but he carried on.

  “During all those lonely nights when I escaped the stinking, overcrowded confines of the orphanage and prowled the snowy cold or the muddy almost-warmth, I slowly got in touch with who I am. I discovered I could make it snow, I could turn water to ice, I could make it cold when I felt uneasy during the few warmer summer days. I guess I’m the perfect example of the old adage ‘learning by doing’. Looking into myself, I found the raw material, looking outside and studying the wintery phenomenon, I found inspiration. Sometimes I stumbled upon a mysterious discovery. And more often than not, I made mistakes.”

  Once again, his voice trailed off and his eyes misted over when he got lost in his memories. Felicia, who had hardly been breathing during his monologue for fear that he would stop again, was close to biting her nails. Inside her, thoughts and feelings were jumbled. She felt sorry for him, she felt his hidden pain, and she shied away from imagining the dire picture his words painted. His voice, monotonous and cool as steel, made the horror come alive more than an emotional outburst could have, much in the way a war documentary evoked the terror exactly because it droned on so mercilessly.

  When he had been silent for so long that she was sure she wouldn’t get to hear more, he went on, bitterness creeping into the next sentences as though looking back, he hated the person he had once been.

  “I was more than the loner by the time I was nine, ten years old. I was a downright bully. None of the boys knew what I could do, but all of them sensed my otherness and all of them hated me as much as I hated them. One day, the most courageous of them, a bully worse than me if you consider the fact that he stood for physical abuse while I stood for quiet terror, took away the one and only possession which meant anything to me.”

  He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple travelling up and down his white throat, and his teeth grinding together for a moment. There was icy hatred flashing in his eyes again. It unsettled the fire dragon inside her, but it didn’t touch her.

  “I wasn’t like them, I didn’t hoard the things I could get my fingers on. But there was a big, shiny, slightly curved, dangerously sharp tooth that belonged to me. I had apparently carried it with me when I was left at the orphanage’s doorstep as an infant. It was some predator’s canine tooth, speaking of size and power, engraved with tiny whirls and scribbles which nobody could make any sense of. Miraculously, none of the children or care-takers had ever dared to steal it from me, probably sensing the danger it radiated. I carried it around my neck, tied on a string, but after all these years and getting more powerful, I had stopped being careful enough.”

  Joshua’s body tensed up even more, and Felicia caught herself biting her nails, anxious to know what had traumatized him so much.

  “One day after we had had one of the few baths we were granted, the bully—he was older than me and heavily built—wrestled me down and tugged at the string so hard that it cut into my neck and tore. I didn’t feel the pain, although blood was trickling out of the cut. I raced after him, screaming murder, when he ran outside, spinning the animal tooth over his head like a trophy and hurtling expletives at me. While the other boys smelled their chance and held me back, he snatched the axe we used for wood chopping and brought it down on the tooth. He didn’t stop while I yelled and cried and fought the others tooth and nail to escape. It was no more than white dust against the muddy, sleet-covered ground when he was finished and laughed and laughed.

  Something snapped in me. The ice power that I had been holding back all this time took over. The children let go of me as though the biting cold emanating from my skin had burned them. I walked toward the boy who had ruined my one and only precious possession, but he simply continued to laugh as though he had gone completely mad. Searching for a weapon to take revenge, my eyes fell on a row of icicles gleaming above, hanging like so many pointy swords from the roof. Without thinking, I projected my ice magic out and up and plucked the biggest icicle off. It snapped with a crack and I hurled it straight at the boy’s head with my hand of frost.”

  Joshua stopped and closed his eyes while pain flickered on and off on his face. When he continued, his voice wasn’t more than a whisper. A mantle of mist had gathered around him, slithering up his legs and curling itself like a comforting blanket around his torso.

  “The icicle hit the top of his head and broke from the fore of impact, leaving the jagged part inside his bleeding head. He hit the ground with a wet, heavy thump, unable to scream.”

  Opening his eyes and staring into the distance, his hands reached out automatically to gather the cool mist. He swirled it around absentmindedly, and it spiraled into the air in the distorted shape of a person, collapsing on itself when he drew a shaky breath and straightened up.

  “He died the same day.”

  An involuntary gasp escaped her, and one of her hands flew up to cover her mouth. Joshua didn’t look her way. He folded his arms again and stared a hole into the air. After endless minutes, he picked up the thread, his voice now more than a whisper and once again emotionless.

  “The children had all seen what had happened. Unbeknownst to me, the matron had also witnessed it because my screams had sent her running. They had all seen, but none of them understood. Only one thing was clear. I had done a terrible thing. I had caused a tragedy. I had committed a crime. More than ever, I was left alone in the days after the tragedy. Everybody was frightened of me, none more so than I myself. For the first time ever, I didn’t want my special power and my solitude. Young as I was, I knew I had killed somebody, and feared I would go to hell for it.”

  For a split second, an odd grin lifted the corners of his mouth.

  “So far, I haven’t gone to hell. In fact, things got better as if a curse had been lifted.”

  The grin made her more uneasy than anything she had heard and seen so far, but she couldn’t put her finger on it why. Was it because for a moment, he looked dangerous?

  Uncrossing his arms, he pushed himself from the tree trunk he had been leaning against and turned to face her, as though he had just remembered her presence. His face closed in on itself, but his eyes held hers. He was truly speaking to her now.

  “Not many weeks after the…incident, a messenger came to the orphanage. He looked richer and cleaner and fatter than anybody we had seen, and he spoke with a slight accent. After he had spoken a full two hours to the head of the institution and left, all children were summoned into the hall and an announcement was made. This man lived in England, a rich country far, far away that needed children. He had told them to choose ten of us who would travel with him to the Promised Land, and have a new life, a much better life.”

  A mirth
less bark of laughter escaped him, but Joshua pulled himself together and continued.

  “The matron read out the ten names. The last one was mine, and her voice trembled when she said it. She must have been glad as hell to get rid of the strange problem child. I can’t remember much of what happened afterwards. It’s all like a blur, like a scratch in the CD that I jump over to the next clear spot of the movie. Before I knew it, I was in England, in an orphanage that was heaven after what we had been through. We got fed and clothed, we were sent to school. It was a different world. Less cold, weather-wise and otherwise. Still in shock from what had happened and wary of every single change, I wasn’t myself. I hid it all away inside of me, and I didn’t miss it. I grew, and I grew up.”

  He walked over and sat down next to her, straddling the log and facing her. Right then, he looked normal and emotional. There was a mix of wonder and understanding on his face, echoing inside her mind. The wonder at how things had changed, the understanding of why he had changed.

  “I discovered my love for books when I was around 17 or 18 and passing out of high school. I rediscovered myself and chose to change my life yet again. I moved to America to stay with my stepfather’s brother and help with his newly opened construction business. After a short time, I quit and started my training to become a private investigator. In my free time, I devoured all the fiction on magic as well as all the classics from Alice in Wonderland over David Copperfield and Oliver Twist to Lord of the Rings.”

  For the first time, the hint of a smile flickered across his taut face.

  “Thus, my wish to be different grew in me again. I was like them, wasn’t I? I had a special talent, I could do my own kind of magic. I could be a hero instead of a loser. So I turned from fiction to non-fiction, and I went about it methodically. All those self-help books and esoteric bibles and scientific studies taught me what I’m now trying to teach you. About control and about knowing yourself. About the fine line between blending in and being true to yourself. About the need to learn.”

  His gaze pierced into hers when he leaned forward so much that his cool breath brushed over her face and sent a delicious shiver down her spine.

  “I have never forgotten that what I have inside me can kill, and it’s my biggest motivation. It’s the one most important lesson I can pass on to you. With your fire, you’re probably more dangerous than me. Be careful. Know yourself, your limits and your strengths and weaknesses. Don’t give up on the balancing act.”

  He leaned closer still, until she felt like drowning inside the icy depths of his eyes, and the fire dragon hissed in anticipation, talons ready.

  “Be careful,” he repeated.

  His lips danced over hers in a kiss which was strangely tentative and tender, reflecting the warning—or was it a plea?—of his last words.

  Her mind was reeling with all she had heard and all she wanted to ask, but her body and her fire took over.

  Lowering her legs and scuttling forward, she intensified the kiss, putting warmth and pressure into it as though it was her part to reassure him. Maybe this was their way of thanking each other, he for listening to him, and she for disclosing his past to her?

  Are you kissing a murderer?

  The tiny voice inside her was inconsequential. She didn’t view him as a killer. More than before, she was fascinated by him. And for the first time since they had met, she had a feeling she understood him to some extent. All the distant aloofness and superior attitude and quiet confidence… there was a reason for it.

  But where was the lesson for her?

  Chapter 11