Firewalker

by Josephine Angelini

  Lily saw Rowan’s brow furrow in thought. He didn’t ask any more questions, not even to find out how Lily knew that. Before she could formulate a question for Rowan that didn’t implicate her, the group arrived at a satellite camp for the sick.

  “Holy shit,” Tristan cursed under his breath.

  Rowan staggered forward, wading out into the huddled groups of skeletal woman and twisted, deformed children. Even though he was wearing a glamour, they could tell from his skin tone and from the beaded leather work of his pack that he was an Outlander. They scowled at him as he passed, their hatred palpable. Right or wrong, they apparently blamed him and all Outlanders for what Chenoa had done to them.

  “No,” Rowan said in disbelief, ignoring their glares. “This isn’t natural.”

  Lily came forward and focused on one of the women. She was balding and had ulcerous sores around her mouth—like the people in the cinder world. Lily crouched down and looked the woman in the eye. She could see the chromosomal damage in the woman’s cells. The woman’s liver, kidneys, and immune system were all shutting down, unable to repair themselves.

  “Why don’t you take a step back, Rowan,” Tristan said. As Rowan moved away, Tristan crouched next to Lily and introduced himself to the woman kindly. Tristan remembered her humanity, even if Lily was too stunned to be polite.

  It’s her DNA. I can’t find any cells in her that have undamaged genetic material, Lily. Can you?

  No, Tristan. She’s past saving.

  What did this?

  Lily heard Breakfast and then Una in her head.

  Their cells can’t repair themselves. It’s horrible.

  What is this? Can you see the air around them? It’s filled with little specks of almost nothing that are whizzing around like crazy.

  Lily reached out to all of her mechanics, sharing mindspeak with them.

  They’re radioactive, you guys. We can’t stay with them for long. Rowan, do you have any idea how to help these people?

  Those that haven’t passed the tipping point? Yes. But the ritual will be very difficult for you, Lily. Tell the others to spread out and try to find people who still have some healthy life-helix material.

  It took Lily a moment to understand, but when Rowan passed an image of what he needed to her, she instantly understood.

  We call that DNA, Rowan.

  Try to find healthy DNA. I’m afraid I’ll have to stay here while you go scan them. These people don’t want me near them. They hate Outlanders.

  I’m sorry about that.

  I’ve dealt with prejudice my whole life, Lily, but at least these people have a reason. An Outlander betrayed them and exposed them to some contaminant that did this to them, although I can’t think of what it was.

  Lily could guess what it was—enriched uranium, which had been made in the laboratories of Lillian’s college. Chenoa used the tunnel women to pass the uranium from city to city and then into the Outlands where she and her two acolytes, Hakan and Keme, put it into the thirteen bombs. And she never told the women how dangerous it could be. All this time Lily had sided with Outlanders, wanting to believe that they were pure victims who were blameless and noble. There were no good guys anymore.

  Lily felt Rowan put his hand on her arm, startling her out of her thoughts. She smiled at him warmly. At least Rowan was still pure and good. He had no idea about what Chenoa and Alaric had done to these women.

  I know this is hard, but you have to be strong, Lily. They need help.

  It’s okay. I can handle it.

  Lily passed on Rowan’s instructions and then started approaching the contaminated women, trying to find even a scrap of undamaged DNA. She couldn’t help but think of Lillian and she didn’t want Rowan to know. Lillian had used the same words Rowan had. She’d said “tipping point” when she talked about her strange illness with Captain Leto, and now Lily knew for certain what that illness was—radiation poisoning. This was how Lillian was dying. Slowly. Painfully.

  Lily and her mechanics walked through the medical camp, but very few of the women could be saved. The children were even worse. All of them were under the age of two, and all of them suffered from heart-wrenching birth defects. Lily tried to be respectful, but more than once she had to turn her face away or she knew she’d start crying.

  “I can’t think of a worse way to die,” Una said quietly when they had regrouped.

  “I think I’m going to have nightmares for the rest of my life,” Breakfast said, agreeing with her.

  “Did you find anyone with healthy cells?” Rowan asked. His expression was stormy with anger, but Lily knew it wasn’t because these people rejected him. He needed to be angry. Rowan couldn’t allow himself to be paralyzed by sadness right now or to get insulted by the prejudice that surrounded him. He had to stay focused and find a way to save these people.

  “I got two, maybe three,” Breakfast said.

  “Three,” Una said.

  “One,” Lily said, looking down.

  “I only saw one, too,” Tristan said, looking at Lily.

  “I got two,” Rowan said. “Were any of them children?” Everyone shook his or her head. “I didn’t think so. We need to collect clean tissue samples—no contamination or it will be a disaster,” Rowan said.

  Tristan looked around at the filthy conditions of the med camp. “That’s not going to be easy.”

  Rowan turned to Breakfast. “See what you can get from Riley. We need nine, maybe ten, sterile metal rods that are slightly sharpened on one end and about that big.” Rowan held up his forefinger and thumb to indicate about two and a half inches. “Breakfast and Una are going to swipe the inside of their cheeks and collect some cells from the people who might be saved. Don’t collect cells from an ulcer. If you have any problems finding undamaged skin inside their mouths, let me know and we’ll take blood instead.”

  “Got it,” Una said. Breakfast and Una left them to get what they needed from Riley.

  “Tristan, you’re with me,” Rowan said. “We’ll set up for the ritual.”

  “What do I do?” Lily asked.

  “Gather your strength,” Rowan replied. He led her to one of the barrel fires and sat her down on a small stool beside it. He met her eyes and let his glamour drop for just a moment so she could see his true face. He looked worried. “You’re going to need it.”

  Lily sat next to the fire, staring at the women, who were staring back at her. She could feel their distrust and awe. They hated witches, but at the same time they had spent their whole lives ruled by them. Old habits like respect and fear die hard. Their stares made Lily uncomfortable, but it didn’t take too long for Tristan to come back for her.

  “We have a tent set up,” Tristan said. He handed Lily a white silk slip that was a little dingy and slightly frayed at the hem. “Rowan said to put this on and we’re to meet him there.”

  “You want me to strip right here?” Lily said, looking around. There wasn’t much light down in the tunnels, but Lily was still exposed.

  “This ain’t Nordstrom’s. I doubt they have fitting rooms,” Tristan replied, shrugging. Lily glared at him and he started looking around. “Wait,” he said. He picked a filthy tarp off the ground and held it up, blocking Lily against a wall.

  “I don’t believe this,” Lily grumbled, and then stripped as quickly as she could behind the meager screen Tristan had created.

  Tristan carried her clothes while Lily shoved her bare feet back into her unlaced boots. She clomped along behind him, her arms crossed over her nearly naked frame as they went to the tent.

  It was already sweltering inside the small space. A fire blazed and a pot full of water rested on top of the glowing embers. Rowan’s shirt was off, and he was stirring something inside the pot. He used tongs to pull a now-sterilized sheet of metal out of the boiling water and laid it to dry by the fire.

  “Get the tissue samples from Breakfast and Una,” Rowan told Tristan, who left Lily and Rowan in the tent alone together. Rowan was silent
as he placed a single knife on a square of black silk in front of him. He looked at Lily.

  “This is blood ritual,” he said quietly.

  Lily swallowed and nodded. “What do I need to do?”

  “Bleed,” he replied. His eyes rounded for a moment in apology before relaxing and sliding half shut into a calm that bordered on trance.

  Rowan turned back and started pulling small glass jars out of the pot, laying them on top of the sterile metal sheet to cool. There were ten in all. Rowan moved the metal plate and glasses away from the fire and placed them between him and Lily.

  Tristan and Una returned with ten metal rods, holding them carefully so the tips that had the tissue samples didn’t touch. Rowan placed each rod upright in the ten glass jars.

  “Thank you, Una,” he said, dismissing her. She left the tent and Rowan turned to Tristan. “Take off your shirt. Sit behind Lily and support her. She’ll probably faint at some point,” he said in a deep and calm voice.

  Lily felt Tristan sit cross-legged behind her, his arms at the ready in case she tipped to either side. Lily took a breath to calm herself, focusing on the slow and steady thump of Tristan’s heart as he matched Rowan’s trance-like energy.

  Rowan carefully picked up the first metal rod and showed her the tissue-laden tip. “Look at the cells. Find the life-helix. Do you see it?”

  Lily concentrated on the cells, her awareness sinking into them on a smaller and smaller level until she found a perfect, coiled strand of DNA. Every single biological fact about this woman was stored in that one strand. Her whole life on a string. “I see it,” Lily said.

  “That is pure. Store the pattern in your willstone,” he said. Rowan put the rod, tip down, into the sterile glass cup and took Lily’s wrist in one hand and his silver dagger in the other. “Let your blood be the creator of that pattern.” He slit her wrist and let her bleed into the cup.

  Lily watched her blood pool in the cup and mix with the cells in the sample, and she knew instinctively what she needed to do. Her rose-colored willstone flashed and sparkled with power as Lily drew heat and strength from the fire. Her blood cells changed into something more basic and less differentiated and took on the pattern of that particular woman’s DNA. As it did so, her blood changed from red to golden.

  “Stem cells,” she heard Tristan whisper.

  “Look at this. It is pure,” Rowan said, holding up the next metal rod and flipping it over in the glass. “Let your blood be the creator of that pattern.”

  He moved her wrist over and let her bleed over the next skin sample. Again, Lily changed her blood as it flowed, creating a stem-cell serum specifically designed for that woman’s DNA. They moved on to the next and the next, each time repeating the ritual. By the sixth sample, Lily felt herself swooning to the side as her blood pumped freely from her slit wrist. Tristan was there to hold her up, and Rowan’s eyes were there to focus her on the last four samples.

  She heard Rowan end the ritual and call out to Breakfast, who was waiting outside the tent, and then she tasted something salty on her lips. Her eyes popped open as the salt revived her and she saw Tristan feeding her pieces of a cracker. She sat up, rubbing her wrist. She still felt a dull ache, but the wound was completely gone. Not even a red seam marked her pale skin.

  “Eat,” Tristan urged. “Rowan said we aren’t done yet.”

  “Where is he?” Lily croaked.

  “Instructing the women on how to inject the serum.” Tristan smiled and shook his head disbelievingly. “He said that they’ll be cured. One injection and in a few days it’ll be as if they never got sick.”

  “But only those ten,” Lily whispered solemnly. “The rest will die.”

  “It’s still beyond anything we can do back home, Lily,” he replied. “It’s incredible. A miracle.”

  Lily smiled at Tristan. “It’s your dream come true, isn’t it? You’re curing sick people.”

  “Yeah,” he said softly. “Even without an Ivy League degree.”

  “Well, I’m glad I didn’t completely ruin your life.”

  “Oh, you still ruined it,” he said, breaking into a huge grin. “I mean, I’m in a tent in a hole in the ground. Not exactly a step up.”

  They shared a good laugh while Lily finished off her crackers. “Any more?” she asked, still feeling drained.

  “This was all we could find for now,” he said, his brow drawn with worry. “Are you okay?”

  Lily shrugged. “I’ll make it.”

  Rowan came back in the tent, his expression stormy. “I asked about salt again,” he said to Tristan. “Breakfast and Riley said they were on it.”

  “What’s next?” Lily asked.

  “They need water purifier badly,” Rowan said. “I know how much you hate kitchen magic, but without safe drinking water, making serum for those ten women won’t matter much.”

  “It’s okay. Let’s do it,” Lily said, bracing herself.

  Rowan and Tristan exchanged a speaking look and Lily got the sense that they were mindspeaking. They must have become stone kin before the ritual.

  Tristan cracked the tent flap and called softly outside to Breakfast and Una. “Tell them we need more wood for the fire,” he said to Una.

  “And a cauldron of their dirtiest water,” Rowan added.

  Both were brought, and in a moment the fire was high again. The water purification ritual only took a few minutes. Rowan laid out herbs and minerals in front of Lily, and all she had to do was blow on them to give them the power to make polluted water clean again. This time, it was Lily’s golden stone that twinkled in response to her summons. One soft exhale and Lily felt all her energy drain out of her, leaving her limbs heavy and her head swimming with exhaustion.

  She felt Rowan catch her wilting torso and lay her gently on her side. His hand stroked her back soothingly while he gave instructions for the cauldron of cleansing water.

  “Make sure they know the ratio is thirty thousand to one, Tristan,” Rowan said. “Thirty thousand cauldrons of water can be cleaned by this one cauldron—be very clear when you tell them because they won’t believe it.” Rowan’s voice dropped to a rumble. “Even I don’t believe it.”

  “What are we dealing with here, Rowan?” Tristan asked fearfully.

  “I think she’s even stronger than Lillian, but I have no idea how that’s possible.”

  Lily cupped her willstones in her hand reassuringly. Something clicked in her head and the words spilled out of her, uncensored and childlike. “Pink is for medicine magic, gold is for kitchen magic, and smoke is for warrior magic. Each can do its own job better than making one stone do everything, but it’s harder to look after three of them. Harder to swallow if they catch me. I’m stronger but I’m less safe.” Her eyes flew open in panic—an echo from Lillian although she didn’t know exactly what it was that she feared. “They’re coming! Don’t let them put me in the barn!”

  “Shh. Sleep, Lily.” Rowan’s hand stroked her hair until her eyes drooped shut again. “You’re always safe with me,” he said.

  “But what if you want to leave me again?” Lily asked. She didn’t hear his answer and frowned as she drifted off on her raft and strayed into the Mist. Lillian was waiting for her there to show Lily the source of her panic and dread.

  … They use the noose poles to push me into the barn, and they slide the doors shut behind me. I scramble to my feet and rush the door frantically, banging on it with my fists, but I know it’s no use. I hear the chain jingling and the padlock click. I’m trapped.

  I hear the sound of people behind me. Moaning. Hacking coughs. Rheumy lungfuls of air bubbling inside half-rotted chests. I turn and face them slowly. It’s so dark in here it takes time for my eyes to adjust, but I can already smell what I can’t quite see. Blood. Blood everywhere. In the brick of the walls, and the concrete of the floor.

  This used to be the slaughterhouse, back when this ranch raised lambs. Back when there were lambs left to eat. I know there are no animals on thi
s ranch anymore. They were all eaten a long time ago. But I smell fresh blood, and as my eyes adjust I see why.

  The fearful pack of skinny, sickly people limp toward me. They all have something in common. They are each missing a limb—whether it’s a leg, an arm, or both. In the far back, lying on filthy pallets or just sprawled on the excrement-caked ground there are people who have been reduced to bloody stumps. They are the source of the endless moaning. There’s a chopping block near the limbless ones. Everyone else avoids it, but they can’t drag themselves away. It takes a while for me to understand what I’m looking at. And then I wish I couldn’t see and that I never came to understand what really happens inside this barn.

  This is a slaughterhouse still, but my captors don’t kill their prey outright. No. That would be wasteful. There would be feasting after each slaughter but famine until the next. If they tried to store anything without refrigeration, the meat might spoil. Certainly, many still died of shock or blood loss during the amputation and those that didn’t make it were eaten outright, but there were only so many people left in the world. The savages had to make their final food source last.

  I look at the maimed bodies huddled in front of me, my mind shying away from the horror of it. They are the new lambs in this broken, backward society. I was wrong. There are animals left in this world. Here, the animals rule, and they eat the people one piece at a time …

  Lillian, enough. I understand you now, but please stop. I can’t take any more. The filth. The suffering. Oh God, I just can’t.

  I haven’t shown you what I owe yet, Lily. If you want to know what really drives me, you have to understand my shame. Soon, when you’re calm, I’ll show you the worst of it. I’ll show you the secret that you and I must carry to our graves.

  Lily had trouble opening her eyes. Her head was stuffed up, and her lashes were stuck together with dried tears. She peeled her swollen lids apart. She was alone in the tent. A small fire was banked low, throwing barely enough light to see by.

  Lily sat up and pulled her knees to her chest, trying and failing to wipe the inside of her mind clean. She knew that even if she could erase the smells and the sounds of the barn, knowing it had existed had changed her. Lillian hadn’t shown her some made-up cautionary tale about the potential horrors of nuclear war to scare her. She’d shown Lily what had truly happened to a version of the world that was very similar to Lillian’s. Something that could still happen now in the world that Lily was in. The world Rowan refused to abandon. Alaric and Chenoa still had thirteen bombs for thirteen cities.