I opened my eyes, and the fire flew out of my hand and hit the wolf squarely in the chest. It shrieked, and then the fire enveloped it.
I hardened my heart against its piteous howl. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
Another wolf decided to try its luck, and Nolan beat that one off with a smaller flare that flew past its ear. It shied to the side and then turned and slunk away.
The other wolves, seeing their leader go up in a blazing flame, had begun backing up.
One of them gave a howl, and they turned as a unit and melted into the shadows. But the fire that had killed the largest wolf had jumped to a nearby tree, the flames crawling from branch to branch. Then it leaped to another tree.
My heart hammered. I’d set the forest ablaze.
Nolan pulled on my sleeve. “Kyla, we have to go.”
“We started a fire,” I said.
“The quellers are close. They’ll stop to put it out. They can’t find us here.”
It went against everything I knew to be right, but if we stayed, we put our lives in jeopardy. I turned and fled up the path alongside Nolan, pleading for the quellers to get back before the flames caused serious damage.
We sprinted until we reached the far end of the lake, and I pulled him to a stop. “Go home,” I said. “Get inside as fast as you can.”
He squeezed my hand. “Stay safe.”
And then he turned and ran in the direction of the farmhouse. I took off again, my lungs screaming their protest, toward the encampment.
The road forked off, following the creek, and I hurtled up it, my sandals catching on tree roots and stones. My foot landed in a small divot in the ground and wrenched sideways, and I fell forward, landing in the dirt with a thunk.
Pain exploded in my hip and ankle.
At first, I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t do anything. Then the air came rushing back into my lungs, and I buried my mouth in my arm to keep from screaming.
Searing agony lanced through my right ankle, and I was pretty sure I’d hurt something in my hip too. Or maybe it was my lower back.
I dragged myself to my knees, and collapsed again to the ground.
The quellers would find me here, injured. I’d be taken to the council for questioning. And certainly branded an arsonist, after the blazing fire I’d left in the woods.
“Kyla?”
I knew that voice as well as I knew my own.
I tilted my head and looked up at Breanna.
She crouched in front of me. “Kyla Brannon, what is going on?” she demanded.
“What are you doing here?” I asked through gritted teeth.
“Going out to find Darick,” she said. “The quellers went out after one fire, and I saw the smoke of a second, and—” She broke off. And then her voice grew colder. “What are you doing here?”
Pain still pulsed in my hip and ankle. “Being injured,” I muttered, looking back down at the ground.
I knew her so well that I could feel the questions circling in her mind, but she just said, “Do you need help to get home?”
I nodded, managing to roll onto my back. That soothed my throbbing hip a little. And we were almost back to camp. Breanna helped me to my knees and then to my feet. Well, to one foot, anyway. I didn’t yet know if I could put my full weight on my ankle.
She encircled my waist with her arm, helping me limp over the ridge and into camp.
“Come to my tent,” she said, her voice stern. “We need to talk. Privately.”
I tried to swallow, but my throat felt dry and parched. This wasn’t going to be fun. We wended our way among the outermost tents to avoid the eyes of too many people, but this time of day, we couldn’t avoid everyone.
“Did you not find Darick?” Liam’s mama stepped into our path.
Breanna waved at her. “Caolinn! I haven’t gone to find him yet. I asked Kyla to come with me, and we hadn’t even gotten out of camp before she hurt her ankle and needed help home.”
Caolinn tsked. “You should take better care of yourself, Kyla. Can’t have our Phoenix dancing on weak ankles.”
I murmured, “Aye, ma’am. I really need to go sit down. Good evening.”
Caolinn peered at me with unabashed curiosity written on her face, but we shuffled past her and between two more tents before we finally reached Breanna’s.
Breanna helped me through the flap, and I collapsed onto the ground next to the fire, rolling onto my back and letting out a deep groan. A soft floral scent reached my nostrils.
The tent soared above me, its white material soft and dull in the low light of evening. Breanna sat cross-legged next to me. “You’re going to explain yourself,” she said in a quiet voice.
“What am I explaining?” I asked, still staring up at the tent fabric.
“Where were you?”
I closed my eyes. Should I tell her that Nolan and I had been out together? Nay, I didn’t want to bring him into this.
“Down by the creek,” I said.
“Do not lie to me,” she snapped. “You were running so fast and carelessly that you fell, coming from the direction of two fires. You reek of smoke. The end of your left sleeve is singed. I need answers, Kyla.”
I glanced down at the offending sleeve and saw a trace of black at the cuff. That would need mending. Then I rolled over to face Breanna. My hip screamed in protest, but I didn’t care. “Do you think me an arsonist?” I demanded, hurt lacing my voice.
She leaned back on her hands. “Arsonist? Blazes, no, Kyla. Don’t even say such a thing.”
I relaxed a little and eased onto my back again.
“But,” she continued, her voice falling even quieter, “I know you and Nolan have been working on . . . some things the council is unlikely to approve of. Things that might start fires on accident.”
Blazes, she was perceptive sometimes.
With a deep exhale, I said, “I put out the first one. There was nothing for the quellers to fix. The second one . . . there were wolves, and I accidentally set the trees on fire scaring them off, and I had to run before the quellers caught me.”
“So you left the trees ablaze?” she asked.
I couldn’t bear to answer, so I nodded.
“They could kill you for that,” she hissed. “Or turn you out of the clan.”
“It wasn’t like I wanted any of this to happen,” I whispered, a tear streaming down my cheek.
“What did you want to happen?” She raked her fingers through her hair like a madwoman.
The sigh that wracked my body came all the way from my soul. “I want to earn the right to make my own choices.”
“That’s not going to happen if you set the forest on fire.”
“I know,” I said. “It was a terrible mistake. One I will not repeat.”
Her lips pursed.
“You’re not going to tell them, are you?”
She lay down beside me. “Of course not. I just . . . don’t want you to get hurt. Or to accidentally hurt anyone. You don’t have the training . . .”
I scooted over and rested my head against her shoulder. “You were the one who told me not to let them take my dreams.”
She gave a dark chuckle. “I regret every word.” And then she turned fearful eyes on me. “Don’t make me regret keeping this from Darick.”
“I promise.”
Her eyes shifted down to my ankle. “And don’t get hurt again. They could always decide Shayla gets to be the sole Phoenix.”
I turned onto my side and twisted my lower back, the joints making a popping noise.
Breanna cringed.
Flopping onto my back again, I moved left to right, testing the hip. Popping it had helped.
I shifted to all fours and then slowly raised myself to my feet, the bulk of my weight on my good ankle.
Bit by bit, I put weight on the ankle I’d injured. It hurt, but it didn’t buckle beneath me.
It had sent searing pain through me when I’d turned it, but I knew it wasn’t broken. Sprained, m
aybe, but not badly.
“I can dance on it in a week,” I said.
Breanna’s face scrunched, and I knew what she was thinking: that a week was too soon to dance on an injury and that Deirdre would throw a fit when I said I had to miss a whole week of practice.
But a fit from Deirdre didn’t worry me. Not when I’d so recently been worried about the quellers hauling me before the council and accusing me of arson.
I sank into a chair at Breanna’s table. I was safe.
My sister sighed heavily. “Come on. We need to get you back to Mama and Papa’s tent so you can change. Can’t have anyone seeing you with that burnt sleeve today.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Deirdre granted me seven blissful days of reprieve from practice, announcing that Breanna would dance one additional week of shows. The thought tugged at me uneasily—what if, during my week off, Shayla somehow convinced Deirdre that I should be stripped of the role altogether? But I scolded myself for the foolish thoughts. Deirdre alone couldn’t make such a decision. For a Phoenix to lose her place, the whole council would have to decide unanimously.
I could hobble adequately on the injured ankle, and Deirdre had warned me to keep it limber with slow walks and gentle stretching. So I limped down to the creek each morning to spend every spare moment with Nolan, or to wander the white maze in my mind when Nolan wasn’t able to meet me.
After the disastrous incident with the burning bushes, I was afraid to try that particular mage concept again. So when I went down to the creek to explore the white maze, I practiced on things I already knew, doing them over and over and over, hoping to discover some secret to better control the magecraft. Repetition, Nolan had said, was how he’d learned.
On the fourth day, I sat cross-legged on the mossy rock, suspending a fiery orb above the creek. Every few seconds, I whispered another word, and the orb changed color. I smiled. When the magic worked right, practice was really a lot of fun.
A red phoenixfly fluttered through the trees, its wings struggling to flap. Its flame was going out. It surged valiantly toward the orb—which was now a brilliant shade of yellow. A forest breeze hit the phoenixfly, knocking it down toward the creek, and I moved my hand to send the orb floating toward it. The fire collided with the phoenixfly mere inches above the water. I held my breath. Had I gotten to it in time?
Then the phoenixfly fluttered upward, its wings now the color of a dandelion.
With a whispered word, I created another orb, this one turquoise, hovering in the air alongside the first. Then a third, fuchsia. I levitated the orbs in the air, sending them spinning in circles.
The phoenixfly descended again, flying near the fire. It fluttered through the turquoise orb, its wings brimming in blue-green flame. Then it chased the fuchsia orb, floating through it and then flying around my head, as if it was delighted to now be shining a lovely shade of dark pink. It surged toward the orbs again, dancing through one, then another, changing color time and time and time again.
I laughed aloud. After a few minutes, the phoenixfly grew tired of the game and fluttered away into the trees, its turquoise wings flashing in the shade. “Be safe!” I called to it.
Holding up my hands, I extinguished the orbs and stood to stretch.
I’d certainly improved—something about being in the maze helped everything come together in my mind in a new way—but I feared I was stagnating. That Nolan wasn’t teaching me new things quickly enough. And I didn’t have time to stagnate. Nolan and I had to pass the mage test before the Fintan moved on to the next county. I wouldn’t be able to get enough practice time with him once we left for Kuhmo.
I’d run through everything I already knew a dozen times. Nolan would be here soon.
I bit my lip and sat back down. Blinking, I found myself in the maze. A voice whispered words in a foreign tongue.
I turned to look for the source of the whispers. But there wasn’t anyone else in my line of sight. Then, a clear, feminine voice rang out. “Smoke.”
That was new.
“What?” I looked around again. “Who’s there?”
But the whispers fell quiet, and the voice did not speak again.
I shrugged and looked at the nearest pillar. Above it, a cloud of smoke was shapeshifting, forming first a circle, then a tree, then a horse. I studied it, nodded, and opened my eyes to see the forest glade. With a deep breath, I let smoke rise up from my hands. I sat there for another hour, fashioning the smoke into shape after shape after shape.
Forming smoke wasn’t a new concept, but it seemed like the maze had . . . guided me to it. Since the fires, Nolan had taught me a single new magecraft skill—the ability to make shapes, not out of smoke, but fire.
My favorite was a fiery image of a phoenixbird that I brought to life over a bed of ashes.
I accessed the labyrinth and called forth a thin layer of ashes. They materialized in front of the rock. Then, I closed my mind, re-entered the maze, and stood in front of an ever-morphing flame that hovered over a white pillar. “Phoenixbird,” I whispered.
I opened my eyes, and a small ball of fire was rising out of the ashes. I splayed my hands, and it formed into a tiny phoenixbird with rippling feathers of flame.
I smiled and waved my hand to whisk the phoenixbird toward me. It turned and flew to me, alighting on my hand without burning me.
“Told you not to do that,” said Nolan as he entered the glade.
I jumped, and the phoenixbird flickered out of existence. “I was domesticating it,” I said.
He snorted. “You shouldn’t practice new skills alone. No one should. Always safer to have at least one other person with you.”
I shrugged. “This one seemed pretty small and contained.”
“I know, I know,” he grumbled. “You can’t resist. Make a pillar.”
I closed my eyes, and the white maze flashed in front of me. When I opened my eyes, a small pillar of fire floated in front of me.
“Now a waterfall.”
That was easy. I only had to blink, to enter the maze for a fraction of a second, and the pillar reformed itself into a waterfall modeled after the one at the old mill.
“Very good,” murmured Nolan.
Take that, Shayla.
A dozen sparks showered out of the waterfall and hit the ground, igniting a patch of grass. I scrambled to my feet.
Nolan pushed his hands out toward the grass, and the flame extinguished. He rubbed his temples.
I clapped my hand to make the waterfall vanish and sank to a seated position on the rock. My confidence flickered.
Nolan’s eyes met mine in a long, tense moment.
“I don’t know how to keep it contained.” The words burst out of me before I could stop them.
He nodded, a deep sigh wracking his chest. “You’ve always been talented,” he said, and then he paused. “And . . . even more so since you’ve been able to go into the maze yourself. But without control, all that power is dangerous.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek. My heart wanted to resist his words, but I knew he was right. What was deadlier than an uncontrolled fire? “And you don’t know how to help me control it?”
Agony shone in his eyes. “I mean, I know how to control it. I keep a peaceful mind. I focus all my attention on the flame.”
“I’m doing all that,” I said, though a single doubt wavered in a corner of my mind. Since Shayla had tried to sabotage me—twice—and been named the Phoenix for her efforts, I’d been pursuing mage training with a tinge of jealousy, a desire for vengeance coloring all that I did. Sometimes it seemed like my power grew stronger when the jealousy was closest at hand.
That probably wasn’t what Nolan meant by a peaceful mind.
I resolved to set the jealousy aside, to center myself and focus on the present moment. That was how Nolan had always taught me to practice magecraft. It was what the Fintan masters drilled into their mage students.
“Let’s go again,” I said.
He
gave me a doubtful glance, but he nodded.
I took a deep breath, focusing on the steady rise and fall of my chest, on the sound of the running water, on the image of the fiery waterfall in my mind. Then I closed my eyes.
Nothing happened. I couldn’t find the white maze. I opened my eyes, my brow furrowed. “That’s funny,” I murmured.
“What?” Nolan asked.
But I shook my head, took another deep breath, and closed my eyes. Again, nothing.
A suspicion uncurled in the deepest recesses of my mind. Had the jealousy itself been what had fueled my rapid improvement? My ability to access the maze that now meant so much to me? Had my anger brought about my success?
I opened my eyes again and tilted my neck all the way to the left and then all the way to the right. When I straightened it, I brought a picture of Shayla to the forefront of my mind. Of her smirk after the wand had exploded above me.
Of the horror I felt when I’d realized she’d stolen my costume. Then I pictured the flaming waterfall around her, consuming her.
I closed my eyes again, and I was in the white corridor.
Relief tingled through me. I hadn’t lost it.
But some part of me still felt afraid. Would this power that brought me success require me to foster darker and darker emotions? Would the price of magecraft be my soul?
I didn’t want that.
But I also didn’t want to fail, to fade away into obscurity, to realize nothing I’d worked so hard for.
I opened my eyes, blinking against the gentle light of day. The fiery waterfall was growing larger.
Nolan looked at me, shaking his head. “Put it out,” he said. His voice was calm, but that vein was bulging in his forehead.
The floating fire grew larger and brighter, and I raised a shaky hand, extending the other toward the flame. “Brú,” I said. But I couldn’t sense the strings of the quelling magic. “Bás.” I brought my hand down to send the pressure of the quelling magic crashing over the fire. But nothing happened. It was like something in my mind was blocking me from accessing the magecraft.
Fire Dancer Page 14
