Firewalker

by Josephine Angelini

  “He must be taking pointers from me,” Breakfast said, brushing imaginary dust off his shoulder. Una gave Breakfast a skeptical look. “I’m just getting warmed up with you, numero Uno,” he told her confidently. “I got mad skills coming your way.”

  “Okay, okay,” Rowan said, smothering his grin and trying to get serious. “What did you three find?”

  “There’s a stream on the other side of the forest and a path,” Tristan replied briskly. He was the only one who hadn’t joined in on the laugh, and he seemed to be looking anywhere but at Lily.

  “Good,” Rowan said, all business now. “Lily? Can you feel Caleb and Tristan?”

  Lily concentrated on them and made contact. She felt a spark of recognition and then relief from both of them. A dozen questions flooded her way—not clearly enough so that Lily could discern actual words, but she got the gist of what they wanted to know and answered back in kind. She sent images of Rowan standing next to her, and one of the outside of the walls of Salem so that they knew she was in the woods near the city.

  “Yes. They’re still really far,” she mumbled to Rowan.

  “Where?” he asked.

  “Someplace warm. Warmer than here, anyway,” Lily answered. “I see a huge wall. They’re outside another city?” Lily answered uncertainly when the images ended.

  “What color are the walls?” Rowan asked urgently. “The rock—what color is it?”

  “Kind of a blue-gray,” she said. “They’re paler than the rocks in Salem, but I could still see quartz glinting in them.”

  “Virginia,” he said. “They’re outside Richmond.”

  Tristan, Una, and Breakfast shared worried looks.

  “Can we make it that far on foot?” Una asked.

  “No,” Rowan replied. “But we won’t have to.” He looked at Lily. “Summon them. Have Caleb and the other Tristan start riding north with extra horses.” Lily nodded and called to them, adding a feeling of urgency. She wanted them to hurry.

  Breakfast raised his hand. “Ah, Rowan? You mentioned horses,” he said through a nervous laugh. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a real horse, let alone ridden one.”

  “You’ll learn,” Rowan said confidently, and started back to the cliff. “Let’s get our gear and head out,” he called over his shoulder.

  “Horses bite, don’t they?” Breakfast whispered to Tristan.

  “Constantly,” Tristan replied, just to mess with him. He clapped Breakfast on the shoulder and then followed Rowan.

  “You’re such a comfort to me in these uncertain times,” Breakfast called testily after Tristan.

  They had their gear packed and the fire extinguished in minutes. Rowan led them south and pushed the pace all day. No one argued or complained. In the first few hours they passed what Rowan identified as Woven tracks several times, and no one wanted to linger even a moment to rest if it wasn’t absolutely necessary. By dusk, they were all slumping with exhaustion. They came to a small copse of trees that offered a little protection from the wind.

  “Alright. This is as good a spot as any,” Rowan said, sliding the straps of his pack off his shoulders and dropping it to the snow.

  “I thought you said we weren’t going to walk to Richmond,” Una joked.

  “We’re not,” Rowan replied seriously. “We’re going to Providence.”

  “Why?” Tristan asked.

  “An underground train system links the Thirteen Cities,” Rowan replied. “We’ll ride it south while Caleb and the other Tristan come north. We’re going to have to sneak on, though.”

  “Why can’t we just take the train to Richmond?” Breakfast asked.

  “You really hate horses, huh?” Tristan teased.

  “Because I don’t know if we’ll be able to get a train at all,” Rowan said, ignoring Tristan’s banter. “But the train tunnels will give us shelter, which is better than this.” He gestured angrily to the darkening woods. His tone made it obvious that he wasn’t in the mood for playfulness. “And because my tribe will be camped outside Richmond. I don’t know how far outside, so we’ll need those horses to get to them.”

  Breakfast nodded, chastised. Una tapped him on the leg. “Let’s get some firewood,” she said quietly.

  “No,” Rowan said sharply. “No fires. And no one goes more then twenty paces away from camp, and even then, you don’t go alone. Understood?”

  Everyone stared silently at Rowan. He was usually so patient. None of them were used to seeing him stressed. Lily had only seen him this way once before—when they were hiding in the woods after Gideon’s raid, and Rowan had run out of salt.

  Go easier on them, Rowan.

  I can’t, Lily. We couldn’t be camping in a worse spot if we tried, but we’ve got no good choices anymore.

  How bad is it?

  You let me worry about that. You need to rest.

  “It’s just for tonight,” he said. Rowan took a deep breath and calmed himself. “We traveled about eighteen miles today. If we’re lucky, we can push even harder tomorrow and be in Providence shortly after dark tomorrow night. Then we can all relax a little.” His lips hinted at a smile. “But not much.”

  Rowan fed Lily a few more olives, anxiously checking her pulse after every mouthful, before nodding with a semi-satisfied look. “If anyone needs energy, take it from Lily,” he said, screwing the lid of the half-eaten jar of olives back on with a furrowed brow.

  They lay down on top of the snow and arranged themselves in a circular heap around Lily. Each of them grasped one of her wrists or a bare ankle in order to stream her heat directly into their bodies. Tristan insisted on being the first to keep watch. After much coaxing, Rowan finally positioned himself next to Lily. Lily was asleep in seconds, and only awoke because she felt intense fear.

  Her eyes popped open and her muscles tensed before she knew what was going on. In the dark she was just able to make out the shapes of Tristan and Rowan crouching defensively between the sleeping group and the dark forest. A bit of darkness broke off from the rest, and moved toward her protectors. Lily heard a rasping, inhuman moan coming from the menacing shape, and knew it had to be a Woven. She kept her head down and stayed perfectly still as she watched.

  “Me,” Rowan called commandingly to the Woven. Despite his authoritative tone, Lily noticed that he kept his voice down, barely speaking above a whisper. “Look at me,” he said again. The creature seemed to obey. “Tristan, work your way around and get to its tail.”

  Tristan moved out of the way, and Lily got a better view of it in the moonlight. It was one of the insectoid Woven that Lily had seen before, but like all Woven it seemed to have its own distinct physiognomy. Lily had yet to see two insect Woven that looked the same. This one’s head was shaped like a beetle’s with giant pincers for a mouth, but after the swarm of thin centipede legs that propped up its front section ended, a snake’s tail coiled out behind it. It must have been over four feet tall and fifteen feet long.

  “Pin it, while I go in,” Rowan said calmly to Tristan.

  Tristan threw himself down on the Woven’s long tail. The Woven hissed and turned to attack Tristan, but Rowan was on it before those long pincers could snip Tristan in two. Rowan thrust his dagger up into the underside of the beetle-like head. No sound came out of it, but the little legs in front wiggled and flailed, at first quickly, and then slowly until they stopped. The creature slumped over onto its side as Rowan yanked his dagger out.

  Tristan stood, panting, and looking down at the dead Woven. “Do we just leave it, or try to drag it away?”

  “More will come if we leave it, but I think it’s too heavy to drag anywhere,” Rowan said quietly, crouching down and grabbing a handful of snow. “We should wake everyone and move the group instead.” He looked up at Tristan and smiled while he cleaned his hands and his dagger with the snow. “You handled that quietly. That was smart.”

  “I didn’t want any more of them to hear a struggle and come help their buddy,” Tristan said shakily.
r />   “You have good instincts.”

  Tristan smiled back, touched by the compliment. “I’m really trying to hate you, you know,” he admitted candidly.

  “Yeah, I know,” Rowan replied, clenching his wet, frozen hands to warm them.

  “I had her all to myself for years and I thought she’d stay mine no matter what I did.” Tristan laughed bitterly. “I told myself that I needed to get all the other girls out of my system first because I wasn’t ready for forever yet.”

  “Maybe you weren’t,” Rowan said kindly. “Most people aren’t ready for forever when they’re eighteen.”

  “But you were.”

  Rowan smiled to himself. “Ready or not, it was forever for me from the first time I saw her. I was seven, Tristan. Not everyone’s built like that.”

  “But you’re talking about the other one,” Tristan said, confused. “The other Lillian.”

  “No,” Rowan replied enigmatically. “It was always Lily.” Lily heard Rowan stand and closed her eyes, pretending to sleep. “We should get them up and get moving,” he said.

  They woke the rest of the group quickly and quietly. Una was annoyed when she saw the dead Woven. “Why didn’t you wake me?” she said, angry to have been left out. “I need the practice.”

  “Next one’s yours,” Rowan promised with an indulgent smile. “Now hurry. The scent of its blood has been on the breeze for a few minutes already.”

  They grabbed their gear and moved away from the dead Woven. Rowan’s gaze kept lifting up to the treetops. He didn’t like to travel when it was still dark out.

  “It’s nearly dawn,” Breakfast said. “Maybe we should just push on rather than trying to find another campsite?”

  Una nodded in agreement. Tristan and Rowan shared tired looks. Between keeping watch and fighting the Woven, neither of them had gotten more than a few minutes’ rest, but they agreed to keep going. The group headed south, treading as quietly as they could through the snow.

  By eleven in the morning they were all queasy with fatigue. Rowan dug up some frozen dandelion roots for them to chew on. The bitter taste was not pleasant but it helped to keep them awake and moving. He called a halt to their slowing march just after noon and told them to gather wood for a fire. In half an hour he had some kind of tea bubbling away inside his cauldron. Breakfast sniffed his portion.

  “Not that I don’t trust you, but what’s in the brew, Mr. Wizard?” he asked.

  “Birch and red clover. Improves circulation. It’ll give us all a little more body heat and energy,” Rowan answered.

  They drank their rather unpleasant tea and rested for a few minutes, but they could all feel that Rowan was anxious to depart and push on before they were fully rested.

  “How much farther?” Tristan asked.

  “About seven or eight miles,” Rowan guessed. “It’s harder to gauge pace in the dark, so I’m not completely sure how fast we were going early this morning. I’m still hoping we can get to Providence by nightfall.”

  He glanced around at the woods, his hair-trigger senses distrustful of everything. They doused the fire and moved out without any more delay. The thought of having to spend one more night in the open was motivation enough to haul them all to their aching feet.

  The sun set, and they still hadn’t reached the walls of Providence. It wasn’t until after eight that they left the woods and came to a large, open field.

  “Providence is there,” Rowan said, pointing across the huge field to a few lights flickering in the distance. “It’s about half a mile away. Come on,” Rowan said, turning back to the woods.

  Tristan’s hand shot out to catch Rowan by the arm. “I thought we were going in. You said we needed shelter,” Tristan said, his fatigue wearing his patience thin.

  “We’re looking for some sign of the underground train that leads into and out of the city,” he said. Rowan began pacing around the border of the woods and the field, looking down at the ground.

  Breakfast copied him, wandering in the opposite direction from Rowan. “Should we be looking for, like, subway grates or something?”

  “Yes.” Rowan looked up and pointed to a configuration of lights. “That’s the southern gate. A tunnel runs due south out of Providence, so it’s got to be somewhere around here. Look for vents melting the snow, or anything metal or man-made. But keep an eye out for Woven while you look. They tend to be even more concentrated around the cities.”

  That struck Lily as strange. “Why?” she asked. “Most animals stay away from populated areas. They avoid people, in fact.”

  Rowan looked up at her and shrugged. “Woven aren’t animals, Lily. Not natural ones, anyway. They come toward people. And the more people, the more Woven.”

  Lily frowned to herself. She knew the Woven weren’t like other animals, but they had still been made from animals. It didn’t make sense to Lily that their behavior would be so alien.

  “It’s like they have a vendetta against people or something, which is impossible. That’s human behavior,” Lily argued.

  “Well, there’s a legend that they are part human,” Rowan said, still searching the ground.

  “But you don’t believe it,” Tristan guessed.

  Rowan didn’t answer right away. “When I was a kid one of the girls in my tribe captured a wild Woven just a few days after it had hatched. It looked like a tiny cat with iridescent butterfly wings. It was beautiful.” He kicked at the snow, ostensibly to uncover the bare ground, but with more force than necessary. “She fed it, cared for it, tried to teach it tricks like one of the tame Woven that they breed in the cities for rich people. She had that thing for years.”

  “What happened?” Una asked, like she could sense that there wasn’t a happy ending to this story.

  “It ate her.” Rowan continued to kick the snow aside angrily. “She loved that thing and it ate her while she slept. Not because it was hungry—no. Ahanu would go without food sometimes to feed it. It ate her because that’s what wild Woven do. I don’t care what the legends say. Anything that’s even part human wouldn’t eat a little girl who loved it.”

  Lily stopped arguing for Rowan’s sake, but she still couldn’t let it go. There was no animal she could think of that behaved like that. Not even insects killed unless they were hungry or threatened. People were the only creatures on earth that killed for spite. Lily searched the ground like the rest of her coven, but her mind wasn’t fully on her task. The Woven were a riddle to her, and maybe it was because of Lillian’s memories and how important getting rid of the Woven had been to her at one time, but Lily was starting to feel as if the Woven were the riddle she was meant to solve.

  They all blundered around in the dark without speaking for twenty minutes before Una called to the group.

  “Here!” she said. “I think this is definitely something.” They gathered around a raised patch on the ground. It was about five feet wide and five feet long, forming a perfect square. “Not a lot of right angles in nature,” she said.

  “Everyone take a side and start digging,” Rowan said excitedly.

  They worked feverishly and had the frozen sod up in half an hour. A large metal plate, flaky with rust, was embedded in the ground.

  “Light a fire,” Rowan ordered. “Lily? We’ll need your strength to lift this,” he said. She nodded quickly, giving her assent.

  They got a fire going and Lily fed her mechanics enough energy to pull the huge metal plate up from its bed. Beneath the plate was an iron grate that was welded over the top of a duct. Rowan bent back some of the bars of the grate, leaving enough space for them to climb through. He put his head down the hole, his willstone brightly shining with magelight.

  “There’s no ladder,” he said, frowning. He brushed some dirt from his hands. “This duct has been out of use for a while. It may not even meet up with the main line.”

  “I don’t think we have much of a choice but to follow it,” Tristan said. He stuck his head down next to Rowan’s and let his magelight a
dd more brightness. “At least there are plenty of handholds,” he said.

  Rowan nodded in agreement. “Una, you go first, then Breakfast, me and Lily, then Tristan. Tristan, close up the hole behind us, and I’ll carry Lily,” he said. “Everyone take as much energy as you can from Lily now.”

  Lily stood close to the fire and rose up into the air on her witch wind. She fed their willstones until Rowan told her the fire was nearly out. She let go of the power loop, dropping out of the air and into his outstretched arms. He gathered her close, stamped out the last of the embers, and swung down the hole after Breakfast.

  Rowan. I hate being underground. It’s like being back in the oubliette.

  No it isn’t, because I’m here. You’re safe, Lily. No one’s going to hurt you while I’m around.

  Rowan held her shaking body tightly to his as Tristan heaved the large metal plate back over the hole, blotting out the moon and the stars.

  CHAPTER

  10

  Lily turned her face into Rowan’s chest and squeezed her eyes tightly shut. The smell of earth and rust wrapped around her and sank so deeply into her skin she could taste it on the back of her tongue.

  She tried to focus on the sway of Rowan’s body as he climbed down. She listened to the beat of his heart. Steady and strong. The enchanting hue of his magelight lit the other side of her eyelids reassuringly. She tried to imagine his magelight as a candle burning in front of her, although she could feel no heat and could gather no power from it. Magelight could not fuel her. Lily touched her willstones with the tips of her fingers, feeling their soft, solid shapes. She told herself that no one was going to take them away from her this time, or ever again.

  “What’s wrong with Lily?” Tristan asked anxiously. He could feel her fear. They all could.

  “Witches don’t like to be underground,” Rowan answered. “They’re cut off from the light of the sun and moon. It drains them.”

  “Witches can get energy from the moon?” Breakfast asked, surprised.

  “Of course,” Rowan replied. Lily could hear the smile in his voice. “Didn’t you ever hear of witches dancing naked in the light of the full moon? Why else do you think they’d do that?”