Liquid Fire

by Anthony Francis

  I didn’t wait to be given direction. When Arcturus had said they were better off having me quiz initiates, I realized that knowing the shape of my art was just as important as the details. I had to show them my scope. So when the Five and Two was done, I really cut loose.

  I whirled into a pirouette, curling my arms in the proper port de bras to capture magical power as I flicked my legs up in complicated sequences of battements. The turnouts and pointed steps weren’t really ballet, but I’d been practicing ballet to help with skindancing.

  Because if I’m going to do something, I want it to look good.

  I whirled, then abruptly stopped, discharging all the mana I’d generated into a gleaming bubble of power the size of a bowling ball. The sphere of power gleamed from red to green to blue to gold and back again, showing I’d mastered channeling different kinds of power.

  I was just preparing to re-absorb the power and show off the magic of my marks when Finch began clapping. “Not bad,” he said, raising his right hand in the traditional skindancer salute. “Now let’s see how you use it.”

  And he blew a kiss to me, sparkles glittering off his hand and wafting toward me in the air like a trail of pixie dust—and then a tattoo bee shot through the sparkles like an ink bullet, puncturing my bubble of power into a spray of Technicolor fireworks.

  I flinched as mana sparked around me, but I was prepared. Finch didn’t like me, and I’d had no illusions a fairy grandmother blessing was winging to me on that kiss. I twirled my hand as I turned out my feet, uncoiling my vine as I grounded myself to drain off power.

  Savage tribal marks leapt out of Finch’s skin, a thicket of dark razors, swirling around him as he swept his hands in a circle, his feet nimbly hopping through a complex dance called the Seven Three Five. Razor bees streamed off his tattoos and swarmed me, biting, stinging.

  By now I had two vines out, whipping them around, batting the bees away. But Finch’s magic was strong, and I was forced to bring my asp tattoos to life, sending the coiling snakes down the vines to bite at the scalpel hummingbirds he’d added to the mix.

  A mistake—Finch stamped his foot, and his tattoos surged out in a spray of abstract shapes. The angles overwhelmed me, and I felt a surge of mana drawn out of me, chilling my core and making my heart race—and then my asps twisted free and fell away.

  My eyes bugged as my asps flopped on the ground. Finch had used metamagic, applying his magic to mine, forcing my tattoos to become projectia. No, I realized, as an asp thumped against the root of a tree, not just projectia—they drew so much mana they had become solid.

  Finch drew in power for another attack, and I angled myself backward, legs stretched out in a move drawn more from Taido than from ballet. I threw my hands forward, pretending to fire another burst of energy or launch a tattoo—and Finch’s abstract angles surged over me.

  My pulse raced. My body shivered. Mana surged through me—not just from my heart, but up through the ground. I’d become real good at drawing mana from other sources, and now I used Finch’s metamagic against itself, drawing mana from the ley lines beneath our feet.

  Let me loose, whispered a voice, let me loose—and I saw no reason to deny her.

  “Spirit of fire,” I said, “come to life.”

  Smoothly, my dragon’s wings slid out of the slits cut in my coat. Gracefully, its tail slid out of my pants leg. Powerfully, its arms hulked out of my sleeves, mirroring my movements. Fueled by Finch’s metamagic, the dragon became more solid than it ever had.

  “That’s your masterwork,” Finch said, his angular armor wavering.

  A low crackling rumble erupted from the dragon’s throat. “Sure you want to bring this one to life?” I asked, trying to keep the tremor from my voice as mana poured through me like a conduit. My boots were smoking. “Sure you can handle this projectia flying around—”

  “Damn it!” Finch swept his hands aside, the angled shapes dissipating. My own dragon partially evaporated as the metamagic subsided. So it was still tattoo magic, requiring a beating heart; I stole a glance at the asps, and watched them fade. He said, “You weren’t supposed—”

  “You had a chance to tell me the rules before picking a fight,” I said.

  “That’s not the point! You’re supposed to react,” Finch said, stomping forward like he was spoiling for a real fight. “Of course an inker can pull out a masterwork and beat someone without one. You’re supposed to match magic for magic, not pull out PhD level charms—”

  “Whoa—match magic for magic, with you using metamagic, which I haven’t even had the opportunity to learn, because it’s clearly a secret?” I said, glaring down at him. “What is this, capoeira, where you get baptized to the mat? Is that it? Did I have to lose to get initiated—”

  “Oh, you’ll lose,” Finch said—and punched at me.

  I fell back into an improvised Taido middle stance. I had a head on him, but no way am I going to underestimate a guy in a fight—guys have twice the upper body strength of girls, and Finch could do me serious damage if I wasn’t careful. Still, I repelled a flurry of blows.

  “We’re done,” I said, after he subsided. “This isn’t a fistfight—”

  But I’d made another mistake, this time turning to leave in the hope that backing down would help defuse the brewing street fight. I felt, rather than heard, the swish of the punch aimed behind my ear. I didn’t think—I just shifted down and to my right, caught his hand and tugged. Finch’s momentum carried him over my left leg, flipping him so he landed on his ass.

  “You all right?” I asked, hand on his shoulder, less to comfort him than to keep him from popping back up. “Anything wounded other than maybe pride?”

  He surged under my hand, then blinked and raised his hand to mine. “Yes,” he said, face a struggling mix of anger and admiration. “You pass. Yes, the fight was supposed to be a lesson in humility—but you not only can fight, you know when to stop a fight. Of course, you pass.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Arcturus said, raising a drink which had appeared in his hand.

  We once again sat around the fire, drinking yet another strange brew Finch assured me was an important part of my initiation later that evening. I was still rattled from our almost-fight, but Finch was treating me like his new best friend, and was telling me about Grinder traditions.

  The little werekin girl kept trying to eavesdrop, and her presumptive parents, the Asian woman and the Native American man, kept shooing her away. I lost her for a while, and then I spied her, again up on a thick live oak branch, watching us. I swear her ears were tufted.

  “Is that young girl a werekin?” I asked, and she ducked back behind the tree branch. Entertaining, but you couldn’t be a mother and not realize that kid was a person—and not part of the show. “A werelynx? We should get her together with my daughter, set up a play date—”

  “Khouri has no interest in a ‘play date,’ ” said the Asian woman, archly, sitting up straight and haughty even though the girl was peeking up over the edge of the branch, her interest piqued. “Especially not with a tame werekin who’s never seen forest.”

  “Cinnamon’s a street cat, and Atlanta’s the City in the Forest,” I said. “I’ll wager she had a harder upbringing than Khouri—no role models, no parents, no education. Though she’s a real quick study; I’ll wager she could tutor Khouri if she needs help with her math homework—”

  “Khouri doesn’t have homework,” said the Asian woman, tossing down her mortar and pestle. “You can dance, you can even fight, but you have not learned what’s important. You’ve not learned our traditions. We have our own ways here, and we’ll train her in them—”

  “If you want to indoctrinate your children, there’s always Sunday School and Bible Study,” I said. “Or Wiccan Hour, or meditation, or home prayers, or whatever. Trust me, your children will have no
trouble choosing their path. After all, you did.”

  “And now that we’ve chosen, we want to pass it on,” she said, folding her arms. She had leather bracers like Jewel’s, but where Jewel’s were mostly proof against fire, this woman’s intricate beaded gauntlets were laced with magical symbols. “What’s so wrong with that?”

  “You chose this life,” I said. “She didn’t. You’re choosing for her. Even down to who she plays with.” The woman’s face faltered, and I raised an eyebrow. “Khouri does have someone to play with, doesn’t she? No? Would you really want to have grown up all alone?”

  “No,” the woman said, licking her lips.

  “Well, if you want to find a playmate for Khouri, I’ve got a werekin who’s a bundle of springs,” I said. “Cinnamon’s a little older, a bit surly sometimes, but she’s a real good sport and a total softie on the inside. I’d be happy to bring her by. And she is a whiz at math and science.”

  “Is she?” the Grinder said, looking at me calculatingly. “Are you?”

  “Well, I could say yes, and you could just take my word for it,” I said, looking back at her, equally calculatingly; she’d just asked something I’d love to know about her. Then I quoted Feynman, “But if you really want to know, ‘the sole test of any idea is experiment’—”

  “Thank the Goddess,” the Grinder said. “At last, someone to tell the whole story to.”

  “I thought I handled it quite well,” Arcturus said, “when you first told it to me.”

  “You,” the Grinder said, and Arcturus fell silent. “All that knowledge you’re so quick to discard chasing each new mystery. Mysticism helps you train your body to dance, but it will not help you grind a perfect mixture. We need both learning and wonder.” Arcturus looked down; then the Grinder turned her strange eyes on me. “Come,” she said, rising. “You are ready.”

  The Stonegrinder’s hut was a stone and moss version of a hobbit hole—underground, but cozy and comfortable, not crude and cold. Another fire flickered at its heart, warming it; its smoke curled up in a strangely corralled column, slinking out a hole in the roof.

  All around the room were piles of worn textbooks: chemistry, geology, mathematics, all very old. I flipped through one, examining its yellowed pages—it had the bad typography and dense math of something turn of the last century. Perhaps the Grinder’s job involved preserving the stored knowledge of her predecessors . . . or perhaps she was not just old, but very old.

  On a terraced column that reminded me of a stone cat condo rested the stonegrinder’s tools—stone pots and modern droppers, handmade brushes and Pyrex glass. Dozens, no, hundreds of little bottles were piled everywhere. On the highest platform rested a lacquered skull.

  “Oh, hey,” I said. “Who’s Yorick?” I stared at it with a slight smile, then noticed a stick behind the skull. Slowly, I realized it was a thighbone. It was yellowed with age—real human bone. At last I said quietly, “And how did you get him?”

  “Through nothing untoward,” the Grinder said, stepping up opposite me with that slightly addled stare. She took the skull and flipped it over, tossing into it herbs and powders. Then she reached for the thighbone. “It was given freely to my master by his master upon his death.”

  The skull and thighbone were her mortar and pestle. Yuk. I turned away as the noise of grinding filled the cabin, unsure why that left me so unsettled. It was touching, in a way, and probably magic of great potency. Arcturus, Zinaga, and I all sat around the Grinder’s hearth.

  “Never met him,” Arcturus said, “but his student initiated me. Good man.”

  “Charming,” I said. “What is this initiation going to involve?”

  “We are going to give you the Skindancer Gift,” Zinaga said.

  “But first,” Arcturus said, “we’re going to let you in on the Skindancer Secret.”

  ———

  “Before the first life,” the Grinder said, “before the first death, there was the first fire.”

  45. Born in Flame

  In the gloom of her cabin, the Grinder flicked the contents of the skull toward the fire. Glittering powder sparkled out, the fire flared . . . and then the air above it grew dark, though still sparkling, like a night sky full of stars. Slowly, I realized the pinpricks were stars.

  “A view of space?” I asked. Then the view expanded, moving in upon a star that grew into a sun, the Sun, with outsized planets curling around it in elaborate crystal tracks. My brow furrowed. “Scale’s off. So . . . a magical planetarium, showing me what you want me to see?”

  “You think,” Arcturus began, “that only scientists know anything—”

  “Be silent,” the Grinder said. “Yes, Dakota, the Eye of Truth only shows what you would call a reconstruction. But is a ‘scientific’ reconstruction is better because you’ve seen it on TV? They’re just special effects, cobbled together by thieves and liars and fools.”

  My skin prickled. A whispered voice said this was . . . true but inaccurate—broad brush. But still, something raised the hackles of the Dragon on my skin, and soon I nailed it—the Grinder had called people who worked in television fools, and I was now in that category. And Alex—

  “I’ll give you thieves and liars. But I’m working to change the fools on TV part.”

  “My point is, the Eye of Truth is not half-truths tarted up with a little flash,” the Grinder said, tossing another pinch of powder at the fire, apparently not seeing the irony as the magic made her own image flare. “Like false color images of planets from NASA, magical lore seen with the Eye of Truth is a view of truth as we know it. As we learn more, the view expands.”

  “This lore isn’t that different from science after all,” I said. “Tell me the story.”

  “You were probably taught the Sun formed first and all the planets grew around it,” the Grinder said, waving her hand. The planets whirled backward, blurring into a glowing, knotted red cloud. “The opposite is true. The Earth and its sister were ancient, ancient bodies—”

  “The Earth . . . and its sister,” I said. I knew this, and not just from the cryptic murmured assent of the magical dragon on my back. I knew it from a more prosaic source—a cover story in New Scientist. “You mean the planet that stalked the Earth . . . Theia.”

  “Yes,” the Grinder said. “Greeks told muddled tales of the titans Theia and Hyperion, the parents of Helios, the Sun. They were not far off. The proto-Earth and the body scientists call Theia are the nucleus around which the solar system formed. The Sun is an Earth-child.”

  The image ran backward further, stars spinning, the cloud expanding, evaporating, leaving two tiny planets sailing alone through the dark. The Grinder released her hand, and the stars moved forward again, the icy twin worlds dancing around each other in the night.

  I felt my forehead furrow. “How did that work—”

  “Theia and Hyperion traveled long in the dark. Perhaps they were orphaned in the death of another star; perhaps they date back to the origin of the universe. No one knows—because of the First Cataclysm. When they fell into the Cloud, its dust stripped them to their bones.”

  Abruptly, a glowing gold column swam up at Theia and Hyperion. They impacted in a flare of light and a growing shock wave, the ice boiling off their surface, streaming away like planet-sized comets as they slowly came to rest . . . and the gas began to collapse on them.

  “Theia and Hyperion were the nucleus of the solar system,” the Grinder said. “In that sense, we owe them everything: the light, the water, the very core of our world. But we do not know our parents. Whatever they were like before the First Cataclysm is all but lost to us.”

  “But not completely lost, or how would we know what we know?” I said, with a little smirk—then my eyes widened. “My God. Not all lost. There are traces. What kind of traces? Was there a civilization on Theia? Were there . . .
artifacts?”

  The Grinder grimaced and cocked her head, not precisely a no.

  “Unclear,” she said, nodding at her column of smoke and its magic images. The cloud was reknotting again, its central core thickening, thick sweeps forming in inner and outer orbits. “But what is more important is that, before their child killed them, it gave them new life.”

  The Sun lit up in the center of the cloud. It boiled away the gas at its core, leaving arcs of pebbles that coalesced into Mercury, into Venus, and, farther out, into Mars. But in the orbit of the Earth . . . Theia and Hyperion danced around each other, covered with oceans of fire.

  “I . . . know this,” I said hesitantly. “From geology . . . this is the Hadean era?”

  “When stones fell like rain,” the Grinder said softly. “The ground flowed like water, glowed like sunset. But Theia and Hyperion had already cleared their orbits. Their skies calmed. Rock cooled, froze, floated like pack ice. And under that dim new Sun, life began again.”

  In the cracked rock of a broken continent, under the looming red moon Theia, the caldera of a volcano swelled in a heaving mass. The veined red surface bulged outward like an egg—then burst, birthing a burning creature with teeth of stone, scales of steel and wings of fire.

  “Oh my God,” I said, shifting in my seat. “Dragons are . . . Hadean life.”

  “Life, born in fire, powered by magic,” the Grinder said. “Perhaps jump-started by the remnants of what came before; perhaps not. We do not know. We do know Dray’yan life ruled for an eon. Longer than the dinosaurs, the flame-beasts basked under the young Sun.”

  “On their twin worlds,” I said, “doomed by the very star they created.”

  “Why doomed?” Zinaga asked. “I’ve heard the story, but how did you just know?”