The Flame in the Mist

by Kit Grindstaff

  She turned and ran. Past gorse, over heather. Tripping on divots, getting up again. As her feet pounded the ground, the shaking stopped. But the screeching went on … and on … and now she became vaguely aware of being chased, a large shape speeding from behind—

  Something thumped into her back, crashing her to the ground. Marsh’s pony sped by. Arms were around her, turning her over. Marsh lay beside her, holding her down.

  “Focus!” Marsh mouthed frantically, but Jemma still couldn’t hear her. “Mother—”

  Jemma thought of her mother’s eyes. Blue points of light, reeling her in, anchoring her. Just like they had in the crystal, in the storm, and then, the first time Jemma had seen Sapphire herself, by the inn’s door. Her heart soared. Her terror eased. The Mist loosened its grip. The shriek in her head faded, Marsh’s voice buffeting through its echoes.

  “Now, think of the river, the sun!” Marsh sat her up, still holding her firmly. “Breathe it in, Jem, deep into you! That’s it, that’s it.… Now, blank!”

  Jemma’s thoughts drained, and whiteness flooded her head. The Mist enveloped her, caressing her in its chill embrace. She gulped down air as the two of them sat holding each other for several minutes more. Then Jemma heaved a huge sigh.

  “Ugh!” she said, pulling away. “That was awful!”

  “You’re tellin’ me! Oh Jem, I thought I’d lost you for a moment.… I’m so sorry! It was too much, too soon. We’ll ease up a bit, slow down your trainin’—”

  Jemma shook her head. “No. I’m all right. We can’t slow down. Not after what Digby and Talon told us about what’s going on. The Agromonds have to be stopped.”

  “Jem … you jus’ said their name, here in the Mist, without so much as flinchin’!” Marsh smiled through her tears. “My, you’re a brave one, you are. Teach us all a lesson, I reckon. You’ll be summonin’ Luminals next, just you see. Come on.” She stood, and pulled Jemma to her feet. “Let’s be gettin’ back to Oakstead. I don’t know about you, but I could use a good bowl of soup. Then I think you should take the afternoon off.”

  “Maybe,” said Jemma, knowing she wouldn’t.

  “I don’t understand, though,” she said, once they were riding back, “why the Mist closes in whether it thinks I’m friend or foe?”

  “You feel the difference, though, don’t you? One way it’s attackin’ you, ’cause it sees you as the enemy; the other, when you blank and see your mind all white, that’s what it sees too. Like you’re part of it.”

  A part of it. That was the last thing Jemma wanted to feel, especially after what had just happened. How would she ever master it enough to move against the Agromonds when the time came? Would she ever be ready? Her parents seemed to think so. They were pleased with her progress. Her healings, Light-focusing, and control of the crystals were coming on in leaps and bounds. And she was integrating the Stone’s Power beautifully, her father said; soon, it would be so much a part of her that she would hardly need to think of the Stone at all. She’d also been developing something on her own that had begun with Pepper: communicating with animals other than the rats. Bats, birds, and bees now came to her call. Even larger creatures—dogs, goats, and horses—responded to her intentions. (Noodle and Pie, though, were still the only ones who could communicate with her in words.)

  But however much she learned, it never felt enough. She still couldn’t read others’ thoughts as her mother could. And her distance viewing was abysmal. Once, when attempting to track Marsh, Jemma had thought she was in the kitchen, whereas in fact she’d been out in the orchard, leaning against a pear tree. As for summoning a Luminal—which nobody, not even her mother, had been able to do for years—there seemed no chance of that. Not the faintest wisp of a Light Being came, no matter how hard she tried. Still, something spurred her on, and wouldn’t let her rest. Some compulsion that argued against her parents’ worries that she was overdoing it and their concern for her safety, and kept reminding her of her childhood chant: I am the Fire Warrioress, the fiercest in the land.… Evil, evil, go away, cast out by my hand.…

  She gripped the reins and gritted her teeth. Could she really succeed against the Agromonds, when so many had failed? She didn’t know. All she knew was that she would keep training until she felt strong enough to go back to Agromond Castle and do what she must. That day, she liked to think, was far in the future. But something kept telling her that it was blowing toward her more quickly than she was ready for, like a black storm gathering on a not-so-distant horizon.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Called

  The wind whisked Jemma over heather, moorland, forest. Five times twenty-four have passed, it moaned. Hasten, or they will not last! Agromond Castle loomed above pine tops; three small, luminous orbs pulsed from within. Five times twenty-four … they will not last.… Three mournful clangs; the three orbs, their light fading … “Help us …” Children’s voices, keening from the dungeons. “Help!” Then one voice rose above the rest: “Jemma, help!”

  Three orbs. Three children. The voice, again—“Help us, Jemma, help!”

  “Flora!” Jemma woke in a panic, jumped out of bed, pulled on her clothes, and hurtled downstairs. Sapphire and Marsh were standing in the courtyard, drinking tea by the fire pit. They turned as Jemma ran outside.

  “Mother, Marsh! I dreamed … the triplets—Digby’s sister and brothers, calling for help … from the castle … taken by the Agromonds!”

  “Ah.” Sapphire’s eyes paled. “I see this was no mere dream.”

  Marsh turned ashen. “So it’s happened, has it?”

  “Mother, Marsh—you both sound like you were expecting it!”

  Sapphire stood and put her arm around Jemma. “My child,” she said, “we have foreseen this for a while. It is a dreadful blow indeed. But it was always just a matter of time before the Agromonds reverted to their old ways. Of course, we had no way of knowing their next victims would be Digby’s brothers and sister, nor that they would act so soon. The abductions used to be no more than twice yearly, and you’ve been gone barely five weeks.”

  “You mean … they’ve done this because they no longer have me?” Jemma pulled away from her mother. “Then it’s my fault! If I hadn’t escaped, they wouldn’t need others!”

  “Jemma, that is not what I meant!” Sapphire said. “Stop blaming yourself. Had you stayed—even if you’d gone to their side—do you think they would have given up their quest for more Power? People like them never have enough! They want total dominion, over everything and everyone. So you are not to blame, my child. It is they.”

  Jemma pulled away from her mother. “But why didn’t you tell me? If I’d only known!”

  “If you’d known,” Lumo’s voice interrupted from the doorway, “you’d have wanted to go and try to prevent the unpreventable.”

  “It wasn’t unpreventable! We could have warned their parents.”

  “Jemma,” Lumo said, sitting by the fire pit, “the Agromonds’ force and cunning would have outwitted any amount of vigilance, just as it outwitted ours all those years ago. Nobody has ever been able to predict when they would strike.”

  “Flora.” Jemma slumped onto the bench beside him. “I can’t bear it! What can I do?”

  Her parents and Marsh were motionless, their eyes darting to one another. “You know, don’t you?” Jemma sighed. “I have to go and rescue them. I can’t let them die.”

  Sapphire sat beside Lumo. “Yes. You must go. And sooner than I would like, for I cannot help being afraid.” She bit her lips, her hands trembling.

  Lumo put his arm around her. “I know. We thought there would be at least several weeks more.” He looked at Jemma. “But you,” he said, “it is as though all your senses were tuned to this event coming to pass now, driving you on. Never wavering. You have a core of fire, my child, that burns strong.”

  Jemma thought back over her almost five weeks of training. Her father was right. Some part of her had always known that she would return to Agromon
d Castle sooner rather than later. That was why she had kept pushing herself, at times even rousing from her dreams to work alone at night, or missing meals in order to squeeze in every moment of practice she could.

  “Mother, don’t worry,” she said, her nerves twanging. “I’ll be fine.”

  “But … the book …” Sapphire muttered. Every day since Jemma had told them that The Forgotten Song really existed, Sapphire had left no stone unturned in her search for it.

  “It’ll come to me when I need,” Jemma whispered, “just as Majem said.” I hope, she thought. Her mother would be up all night, she was sure, having one last frantic rummage through any obscure corner of Oakstead she could think of. Finding the lost volume would surely give them all some comfort.

  “Jemma,” said Lumo, taking her hand, “I am proud of you, and how quickly you’ve learned. We all are. However, you are still impetuous, and tend to jump to conclusions too readily. This concerns us, for the Mist will be fiercer once you’re moving against those it defends. It will take advantage of the slightest flaw, and … well, we hope you are ready.”

  Jemma gulped, wishing she’d taken her father’s thought-alignment classes a little more seriously. “I hope so too,” she said. The thought of facing the Agromonds felt like a vise tightening around her. But Flora, Tiny, and Simon didn’t deserve to die, let alone in the way the Agromonds planned. She drew in a deep breath. “I am ready. I have to be.”

  Lumo nodded, sighing. “We shall accompany you as far as we can, as will Ida.”

  Noodle and Pie peeked from Jemma’s pockets and crawled onto her lap.

  “And you two, of course.” Lumo ruffled their fur. “Now, according to Majem, the Agromonds always prepared the children for a week. But we don’t know when the triplets were taken. So I think it wise that we leave no later than tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow …” Jemma’s nerves shimmered. “But what do you mean, ‘prepared’?”

  “Feedin’ ’em up, an’ givin’ ’em potions an’ the like,” said Marsh. “To prime ’em.”

  Jemma felt sick. What must the triplets be going through? And Digby, and his parents?

  Lumo turned to Marsh. “Ida, for the rest of the morning, some last lessons, if you will, going over everything you can think of. And this afternoon, Jemma, we must do more work to lessen your self-deprecation, and perhaps try another Luminal summoning—” He was interrupted by the sound of hooves clattering from the town square, and a familiar voice yelling.

  “Jemma! Where’s Jemma? I must find her!”

  “Digby!” Jemma sprang to her feet and ran toward the archway as Digby thundered into the courtyard and leapt from his pony.

  “Jem! You got to come. The triplets—they—gone, five days ago!”

  “Yes, Dig, we know—but five days?” Jemma remembered the words from her dream: Five times twenty-four have passed.… “Why didn’t you come sooner?”

  “We din’t know. They was stayin’ the week at our cousin Smithy’s, half a day south of us, an’ when Flora an’ the boys disappeared, well, Abe Smithy, he’s only four, an’ thought it was a game.… Din’t tell his folks till the end of the day. Soon as they realized, Uncle Smithy tried to come to us, but the Mist kept at him, he was that angered—”

  “Oh, Dig …” Jemma took his hands and squeezed them, her heart breaking for him.

  “Took him more’n two days to reach us. Two days! By then our little ’uns had been gone more’n three. Pa an’ me, we went straight up to the castle, an’ saw ’em, Flora, Tiny, an’ Simon, in the dungeons … it was awful, awful! Couldn’t unlock ’em, Drudge don’t have the keys no more, see—Nocturna took ’em, he said—so we said we’d go an’ talk to the Agromonds, bargain with ’em, tell ’em we won’t deliver to ’em no more, but Drudge, he talked us out of it, said it wouldn’t do no good, they wouldn’t care, an’ would only kill us too. He kep’ sayin’ your name, Jmaaagh, Jmaaagh, you know, the way he does, get Jmaaagh.” Digby was trembling. “Said you was our only hope. I been riding all night … I hate to ask you, Jem, after what you been through, only I din’t see what else … an’ Ma n’ Pa, they begged me. Please—”

  “Dig, of course I’ll come!”

  Lumo and Sapphire stepped up beside them.

  “We were already preparing our journey, Digby,” Lumo said.

  “But Lumo,” Sapphire said, the blue washing almost entirely from her eyes, “if the Agromonds took the triplets five days ago, then …”

  “Then we must leave now,” he said, “since there are just two days left to save them.”

  The rescue party was soon ready. Pedrus had saddled another pony for Digby—his own was exhausted—while Bethany, Moll, and their mother had hastily packed sandwiches and flasks of mauve tea. Talon had given Jemma a woolen nightcap—it was a good disguise, she said; she couldn’t see a single strand of red poking from it—and Pedrus lent her his saddlebags for Noodle and Pie, who settled in with the book, cloak, and crystals. At the last moment, Bethany thrust a shiny golden coin into Jemma’s trouser pocket. “I blessed it at your homecoming fire,” she said. “You never know, it might come in handy.”

  Jemma, her parents, Digby, Marsh, and the rats rode out of Oakstead on the stroke of ten.

  They cantered along in silence, Marsh leading the way, with Digby and Jemma close behind her, and Lumo and Sapphire bringing up the rear. The sun became hazier with each mile as the Mist thickened, and the morning air grew chilly and damp. Jemma pulled her cloak from the saddlebags and managed to wrap it around her, glad she’d thought of bringing it. She patted the Stone around her neck for extra reassurance.

  Digby rode just ahead of her on Steadfast. How must he be feeling? Surely he must hate the Agromonds, so why didn’t the Mist attack him? Poor Flora, Tiny, and Simon! The desire for revenge flared in her. Instantly, something that felt like an icy hand slapped her face, almost knocking her from the saddle. The Mist is so quick to read me, she thought. She reeled in her feelings and kept her eyes fixed over Grayboy’s ears, until her mind and the white view ahead became one.

  Soon they passed the point where she and Digby had been ambushed. Jemma’s heartbeat quickened, rousing her from the rhythm of Grayboy’s hooves. Noodle and Pie were restless in her pockets.

  “What is it, Rattusses? You feel something too?” She looked around, alert to any sign of suspicious-looking strangers. But there were only rocks and heather.

  Then came a scream, and a thud behind her.

  “Lumo, Ida! Help!” Sapphire gasped. “No—stop!”

  Jemma turned. Her mother was writhing on the grass, clutching her head. Her pony stomped the ground several feet away, snorting, its ears flat on its head.

  “Never, never!” Sapphire screamed, lashing out at thin air. “Not my daughter, you won’t—oh, merrily doth the skylark water on the garthmfflick!”

  “Mother!” Jemma leapt off Grayboy.

  “Jemma, stay!” Lumo was off his horse, running toward Sapphire. At the same moment, he and Jemma slammed into an invisible shield.

  “Sapphire!” yelled Marsh. “Counter—use the Light!”

  But Sapphire was rolling around singing at the top of her voice: “Jamem​mamem​emma! Ah, the carbonariforous glug glug glu … Wheeeeeorrrrr!”

  “Accursed Mist!” yelled Lumo. “Mord take it, it’s— Oh! Folderolay flaflafla flombug!”

  Marsh was beside Jemma now, pushing against the shield. Marsh’s words ran through Jemma’s head: Counter … Blank … She closed her eyes and thought of the moment she’d first seen Marsh riding out of the Mist to meet her. Warmth flooded her heart; the shield seemed to give a little. She opened her eyes. Marsh was still pushing frantically. Lumo was spinning in circles, slapping his head and muttering gibberish. But Digby was kneeling by Sapphire. Sapphire clung to him, wild-eyed. Gratitude welled up in Jemma and suddenly she too was through the shield and running toward them, as was Marsh. Seconds later, Lumo joined them, looking dissheveled and disoriented.

  “Digby
! Thank you, my boy,” he said. “Sapphire, speak to me!”

  “Oh—oh—” Sapphire sputtered as Digby and Lumo helped her to her feet. “I had the merest thought, the merest flicker of worry about Jemma … then it grew into hatred for them for taking her.… I couldn’t counter, couldn’t blank … Too confused …”

  “I, too,” said Lumo, looking pale, “was taken off guard.”

  “But how did Digby get through?” Jemma asked. “He must have been thinking of the triplets. Why didn’t it stop him?”

  “Actually,” Digby said, “I wasn’t thinkin’ of ’em. I just saw she needed help. That sort of took me over.”

  “An’ don’t forget,” Marsh said. “Digby got through when he was lookin’ for you in the forest that night, Jem. P’raps he has some immunity to the Mist from deliverin’ to the castle every week.”

  “Digby,” said Lumo. “When you think of your brothers and sister imprisoned at the castle, what is your feeling?”

  “I want to help ’em, save ’em. Rips me up, it does.”

  “No thought of revenge against the Agromonds?”

  “Revenge? I’ll say. There’s times I want to tear ’em limb from limb. But them thoughts is like poison goin’ through me, tanglin’ in my head till it’s a mess an’ muddle, an’ I can’t think straight. I figure that don’t help the triplets none. So I jus’ focus on ’em being home safe, like it’s actually happened, you know? Then anythin’ seems possible.”

  “Extraordinary,” Lumo said. “Being able to put aside such anger … Your purity of heart is your best defense, Digby. For all our training, it puts us to shame.”

  Jemma walked over to Grayboy and the other horses, and gathered their reins. Clearly her parents would not be able to go on, vulnerable as they still were to the Mist.

  “Jem,” Marsh’s voice came from behind her. “Your folks is goin’ to have to turn back.”

  “I know.” Jemma clenched her fists and tried to quell the hatred rising in her. She wished the Agromonds were dead.