Liquid Fire

by Anthony Francis

  “College physics,” the Grinder said, tilting her head. “Explain it to them.”

  “Things need speed to stay in orbit,” I said. “Theia and Hyperion were doomed as soon as they hit the cloud. It stole their velocity, made them fall toward each other. Even if they didn’t impact right away, the Sun would eventually jostle them into each other.”

  “It’s the three body problem,” the Grinder said. “It isn’t stable.”

  I glanced at her. The Grinder also had training in science before she joined the Guild.

  “Life as we know it began beneath the feet of the fire beasts,” the Grinder said. “As the worlds cooled, Vai’ia and Ni’iva began to flourish in the embers of Dray’ya—”

  “Vai’ia? Ni’iva?” I shook my head. “I keep hearing those words, but I don’t understand them. I don’t care whether you think of them as midichloreans or the living Force or whatever, I always just thought that stuff was woo-hooery. Now you’re telling me all of this is real.”

  “Vai’ia is the spirit of life,” Arcturus said. “Of the first life that formed on Earth—”

  “A layer of bacteria, born in the cooling crust of proto-Earth,” Zinaga said, and Arcturus scowled. “Living in the coals of Dray’yan life, but not consuming that life—thriving in the embers, living off magic. The first—what’s the word you used, Grinder, auto—”

  “Autotrophs,” I said. The Grinder was twisting her staff, showing me a layer of sparkling moss beneath the feet of dragons, like a bed of pearls. “Life that feeds itself given a source of energy. And Ni’ivan . . . let me guess. The first heterotrophs, the first life eating other life.”

  “The first death,” Zinaga said. Among the jeweled moss, mushrooms began growing—strange, glowing and fantastic, some as large as mountains. “At first, magical fungi which ate the decay of other life forms and turned it into more life. Later, it became more aggressive.”

  “On both worlds, I take it,” I said. In the magic window into the Grinder’s supposed past, rocks hurled into space by impact on one world landed on the other . . . then flowered into green moss and silver threads. “So that’s not why you have a third word. Vai’ian and Ni’ivan are fancy words for autotrophs and heterotrophs, defined by their source of energy. Vai’ian draws energy from the environment, Ni’ivan from other life, so logically, Dray’yan life would be . . . life that provides its own source of energy?” Then all the pieces clicked. “Life built on liquid fire.”

  “Precisely,” the Grinder said, smiling in triumph. “Life that is its own source. Life that is more than just fuel for magic, but feeds on it, consuming only the tiniest fraction of real matter in the cycle. A nearly infinite, practically endless source of magical power.”

  “There’s no way forms of life based on that would ever fall to predators or disease,” I said. “You said the First Cataclysm. I’ve already guessed there was a Second, when Theia finally impacted Hyperion. Did that kill off the dragons?”

  “No,” the Grinder said, twisting her staff. Theia impacted Hyperion, shattering both worlds. A ring of silvery material formed, then coalesced into the young moon, but on the newly formed Earth, new dragons were born in calderas. “It was the cooling that killed them.”

  As the new Moon cooled, it glowed with a shimmering silvery light. But the new Earth just cooled and cracked as the red seas of lava faded. Impacts ceased, volcanoes became rare, and the great flame beasts began dying, falling and crumbling to dust, one by one.

  “Even the fire that seems to burn forever may one day go out,” the Grinder said. “As the surface grew cool, Dray’yan life retreated underground. Vai’ia and Ni’iva followed, digging into the mantle, a thick layer of life woven through with silver threads of death.”

  “I know the next part of the story. As magic died, non-magical life flourished on the surface . . . and Vai’ia and Ni’iva infected it,” I said, steepling my hands. Beneath the dark crust, green and silver threads warred, then reached up, twisting life. “Making werekin and vamps.”

  “And drakes are the same kind of thing,” Zinaga said. “Magically infected creatures—”

  “So this is the Saurian Drake hypothesis,” I said, and the Grinder grinned. “Dragons in the fossil record are just infected dinosaurs, mutated by dragon organelles. There are no real dragons—none, at least, in recorded history. Or even in the fossil record—”

  “Oh, they’re in history and the fossil record,” the Grinder said. I stared at her. I’d been a chemist, Arcturus an anthropologist; I was becoming convinced she’d been a paleontologist. “And I’m willing to bet, as sharp as you are, you’ve already guessed where.”

  “No,” I said. “You’re talking about things the size of mountains stomping over the Earth before the days we’ve even got fossilized pond scum. If creatures that powerful, that vast, had survived for any length of time, we’d notice. There’d be traces—”

  “Mass extinctions,” the Grinder said.

  “Oh, Jesus Christ,” I said, crossing myself.

  “What killed the dinosaurs?” the Grinder said. “Not mammals nibbling their eggs, I’ll tell you that. Did they teach you giant impacts? Volcanic eruptions? Let me tell you how the most successful mortal creatures in history died, Dakota—there was a hatching.”

  “No,” I said . . . but from the thing on my back, I felt, this is truth.

  “The last one in recorded history was . . . Krakatau, perhaps?” the Grinder said. “Pompeii, almost certainly. Mount Saint Helens . . . may have been a failed one.”

  “Erupting volcanoes are dragons hatching?” I said.

  “Not every volcano,” she said. “But any volcano. A hotspot might be mating sign. A magma pool could nurture an egg. And even if there was none of that . . . a hatching would definitely cause a volcanic eruption. Even if it failed—”

  “Please stop this,” Arcturus said sharply, and the Grinder fell silent. “You’re getting into the rationalist weeds. Magical power is derived from the spirit, not organelles or eruptions. The Skindancer Secret is that there are three sources, not two: Vai’ia, Ni’iva, and Dray’ya. If you rationalize things too much, you miss the energy, the meaning, the wholeness—”

  “I think I understand you . . . but do you really think anything she’s said is wrong?” I said. “Either from a perspective of skindancer lore, or from our scientific interpretations? Because I gotta tell you, I found her little magical Powerpoint pretty damn convincing—”

  “No, she’s not wrong,” Arcturus said, frowning. “Dakota . . . I’m sorry.”

  “For . . . what?” I said, surprised he said it with such . . . heart.

  “For always giving you such a hard time,” Arcturus said. “When we first met, I was a younger man. Well, it wasn’t that long ago, but I was a new master; you were one of my first students. And your intellect is . . . well, intimidating. I’ve been defending my ego.”

  “My intellect?” I laughed. “You do understand I’m the dim bulb of my circle—”

  “You mean the blind witch and the vamp queen, don’t you?” Arcturus said.

  “You think they’re so smart just because they’re scholars,” Zinaga said.

  “Well, yes,” I said. “I’m not going for a PhD in vampirology, or graphomancy—”

  “You were studying chemistry,” Arcturus said. “To become a college professor.”

  “I dropped out,” I said.

  “You switched majors. A budding college professor came to study with me—and then quit because you thought I had no more to teach you. Great way to make me feel like a master, but we must move past that. What makes you discount yourself, compared to your friends?”

  “I went to work,” I said. “I work for a living, and they gave that up to study—”

  “Did they?” Arcturus said. “I hear the witch’s a practicing graphoma
ncer, and the vamp’s some kind of politician, and neither of them have graduated yet. Truth is, all three of you worked while you learned. Now tell me, Miss ‘Dim Bulb’ . . . which one of you got your Ph.D. first?”

  I stared at him. I wanted to laugh, but didn’t. “I do not have a Ph.D.—”

  “You attained mastery of a subject matter. You created a masterwork that made a unique contribution to the field—two of them, one of which rests on your skin and the other which is still flying around. And today, you defended their principles before a council of guildsmen.”

  “You said I’m just an initiate,” I said. “I’m not a master yet—”

  “A master is a position in a studio,” Zinaga said. “It’s not a measure of learning, but status and responsibility. Like a professor, you have to be accepted into a studio and in turn accept students to be a master. An initiate just means an accepted member of the Guild—”

  “The same way a ‘doctorate’ means membership in an academic guild,” Arcturus said. “And don’t tell me I don’t know what that means, Dakota. I do know. I have a doctorate, in anthropology. That’s the game. You have to have a doctorate to give a doctorate, and . . .”

  Arcturus sighed, then smiled, both proud and sad.

  “You’re one of us, Dakota Frost,” he said. “You are a Skindancer.”

  A chime sounded. The Grinder checked her wrist—which bore a normal-looking digital watch hidden beneath all the bangles and feathers—then stood. Arcturus and Zinaga did so as well, and after a brief baffled glance, so did I, facing the Grinder.

  ———

  “Welcome to the Guild, Skindancer,” she said. “Time for your graduation ceremony.”

  46. Droplets of Liquid Fire

  “At midnight,” the Grinder said, stretching forth her hand toward a faery circle, “on the night of a new moon, when the Ni’ivan light of the Sun is hidden, and the Vai’ian light of the Moon is dark, then, and only then, can Dray’ya, Earth’s first life, truly blossom.”

  The four of us stood at the edge of the faery circle, staring at the fantastic eruption of mushrooms around it. They were narrow and rounded and puffballs and oysters, red and blue and white and gold. They glowed like neon, lit from within—but they were not the true prize.

  At the center of the ring, in a blackened patch of soot, grew a cluster of firecaps.

  My head was spinning from the simple implications of the Grinder’s words. The Moon was Vai’ian, the spirit of life, its silvery form the biosphere of a whole world knocked into space by a giant impact. Werewolves drew their power and their curse from that surge of life force.

  The Earth was Ni’ivan, a world of death, a deep web of fungal decay beneath mossy remnants of life, flowering into a new biosphere after that titanic impact. Vampires didn’t catch fire because sunlight was their enemy; it was because the sun was too much of a good thing.

  And beneath them both, down where the Earth was still so hot that rock flowed like plastic, a third form of life flourished, Dray’yan, the last remnants of dragons, their magical cells infecting normal Earth life, producing drakes. But the infestation wasn’t limited to animal life.

  “A Dray’yan fungus,” I said, watching the firecaps grow before my eyes. From tiny nubs, they quickly grew into miniature gnome’s caps, white tipped with red, rapidly swelling and variegating before my eyes into red cones rimmed with flames. “A dragon fungus.”

  “A dragon fungus,” the Grinder said. “This is our secret. Where others see only a battle between two forces, we see the harmony of all three: Vai’ian, Ni’ivan . . . and Dray’yan. Magical power comes from these three spiritual sources. These three sparks of life—”

  “These three kinds of organelles,” I said, stepping closer to the ring, shifting a branch. It crackled under my hand, and I was surprised to see the bark was burned. “The organelles only represent rules of magic. The compounds they’re made of will retain a touch of that magic—”

  “And a touch of that spirit,” the Grinder said.

  Around the ring, moss gleamed, glowing green and verdant right up to its edge. Within the ring was no life but the firecaps, guarded by an inner circle of singed white mushrooms as big as cantaloupes. Even the trees around it were twisted, their bark darkened with soot.

  “So what’s the initiation?” I asked, staring at it warily.

  “We are going to eat firecaps,” Zinaga said.

  My eyes widened. “You can’t eat firecap ink,” I said. “Even if it’s nontoxic in the skin the stabilizers aren’t meant to be ingested—”

  “Not firecap ink,” Arcturus said. “Raw fire caps.”

  “Fire caps,” I said, “are a poisonous fungi. In their raw form, they’re a neurotoxin—”

  “Still thinks she knows everything,” Arcturus chuckled. “Firecap ink is one of our most important pigments—but why? It’s because fire caps are also the source of our power. Consuming them cements our mystical connection to the Dray’yan life force—”

  “Let me speak her language, Arcturus,” Zinaga said. “Fire caps are magical fungi, filled with Dray’yan organelles, drawing their power from them the same way that weres and vamps draw power from Vai’ian and Ni’ivan organelles in their bodies. But like vamps and weres—”

  “They can infect you, filling your cells with alien magic,” I said. “Fire caps are filled with dragon organelles, and you’re suggesting that we eat them so they can infect us?”

  “Yes,” the Grinder said . . . as the fire caps caught fire.

  A bonfire leapt up in the middle of the faery circle, its magic rippling against my skin before I felt the heat. The mushrooms around the fire caps glowed to life in a thousand colors as the air was rent by a tearing, crackling cry that sounded disturbingly like a drake.

  I stepped toward the singing fire. The fire caps burned without being consumed. Their pointed caps, now fully red, were darkening to black, tattoo-style flames etched into their sides. Tiny sparks fell from the base of the caps, then rode the flames up into the night.

  “This is how they spread their spores, though they rarely take root in any place a human sets foot,” the Grinder said, leaning her staff over the flame, catching the sparks in a dark velvet sheet that made them look like tiny stars. “I will share the spores with my apprentices.”

  “Shades of the burning bush,” I said, staring at the caps resisting the flame.

  “They will burn, eventually, but only for a minute,” the Grinder said. “Then, we will quench them. Fire caps must be consumed or harvested before they caramelize.”

  “Browning—the Maillard reactions—makes them edible,” I said, my chemistry flooding back to me. “But it breaks open the Dray’yan organelles, spills liquid fire out into the cells, reheats them from within—and caramelization makes them poisonous again.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “They grow only in faery circles, magically insulated from the modern world,” I said, talking through the knowledge. I had to be sure my facts were right, teasing out the implications. “Already rare, they bloom only once a month, or less, at midnight—and must be harvested within the minute. By someone with knowledge—or you’ll get killed.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “The magical world would tear this grove apart for this knowledge,” I said.

  The Grinder laughed. “Perhaps,” she said. “But those truly in the know would not. We respect each other’s privacy, we Keepers of the Secret Flame—”

  “Last person who called himself that tried to skin me alive.”

  “Frost, relax. It just means ‘guardian of liquid fire,’ ” Arcturus said. “Many groups of people call themselves that. All Skindancers are Keepers of the Secret Flame.”

  “And we keep each other’s secrets,” the Grinder said.

  The fire abruptly went
out.

  The Grinder moved quickly to the edge of the circle, turning over a small hourglass. Khouri, who I had not seen hiding there, scampered forward with a bowl, holding it out as the Grinder carefully selected and picked red-hot fire caps with her bare fingers.

  “This is how firecap ink is harvested,” she said to Khouri, wincing, tossing a cap into the basket, one eye always on that hourglass, so quickly running out. “Just after the flame, just after midnight. See this one, child? White streaks. No good.”

  “I see that,” Khouri said. “And this one? Too burnt?”

  “Yes, child,” the Grinder said. “Toss it there. I will show you how to mulch them.”

  Quickly, they filled the bowl, then the Grinder pronounced them finished. Khouri gasped and scampered off, then ran back with a pitcher, just as the hourglass was running out. The moment the last grain fell, the Grinder poured the water in, releasing a cloud of steam.

  Zinaga, Arcturus, and I crowded around the Grinder and Khouri, smelling the sweet steam rising from that bowl. As the fumes evaporated, we saw at the bottom of the bowl perhaps two dozen black mushrooms, their tips glowing with red flames.

  Then Khouri grabbed one, popped it into her mouth and scampered off with a giggle. The Grinder hissed, shaking her head, but still smiling. Then she turned to us. “Pick four. One for Arcturus, one for Zinaga—and two for you, Dakota. You have some catching up to do.”

  Eagerly we reached into the bowl, seizing the hot, wet, steaming mushrooms. We laughed as our fingers touched, Arcturus and me slapping each other’s hands away and Zinaga trying to referee. But we all came away with gleaming fire caps, warm to the touch.

  I cupped two of them in my hand. “And what about you, Grinder?”

  “I’ve had my share,” the Grinder said wearily, and she looked far older. “For now.”

  “This is already in me,” I said, raising one mushroom in my fingers, watching the light of mana steam off the glowing red flame pattern on its tip. “In firecap ink. Droplets of liquid fire are in my tattoos, breaking down, flooding my bloodstream, collecting in my fat—”