The Fire Chronicle

by John Stephens

  As they came into Chinatown, they found the streets packed with noodle stands inside canvas lean-tos, small vendors selling massive, twisted roots of various colors, jars with dried and blackened leaves, one vendor who seemed to be selling nothing but teeth, ranging from the impossibly tiny to a yellow canine as large as Kate’s arm. Men and women bustled past in padded jackets, the men with long, tightly braided pigtails hanging down their backs. Everywhere Kate looked there was something interesting to see, and she wished Michael and Emma were there with her.

  “Hey!” Beetles shouted. “There’s Rafe! Hey, Rafe!”

  Kate saw the older boy at the edge of a vendor’s stall twenty yards away. He seemed like he’d been caught out and was even then contemplating slipping away. But then he changed his mind and turned to face them.

  “What you doing here, Rafe?” Jake asked. “You getting stuff for the party?”

  And Kate thought, He was waiting here, for me.

  “We came down to get fireworks like you told me,” Abigail said. “But we were gonna get lunch first ’cause these two’re bellyaching.”

  “Were not!” Jake said.

  “Yeah,” Beetles said. “We were worried about you fainting, is all.”

  Abigail just laughed. “Ha!”

  “Go to Fung’s around the corner,” Rafe said. “It’s the best place in Chinatown.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Beetles said. “Fung’s. We know that place. Got a green door.”

  “A red door,” Rafe said.

  “Oh yeah,” Beetles said. “They musta changed it.”

  Then Rafe, looking at Kate, said, “You all go on. She’ll catch up.”

  The children hurried away and Kate and the boy were left standing there. She saw snowflakes were melting on his hair and shoulders, and there were dark circles under his eyes. She wondered how much he’d slept the night before, or if he’d slept.

  “Those’re the clothes Abigail gave you?” he asked.

  Kate looked down, feeling suddenly self-conscious in her shabby wool pants and old boots, the patched shirts and jackets.

  “Yes. What’s wrong with them?”

  “Nothing. I should’ve looked at you before you left the church. Where’s your cap?”

  Kate pulled it out of her pocket.

  “I didn’t need it. My head wasn’t cold—”

  “It ain’t just to keep you warm. Put it on.”

  Kate twisted up her hair and pulled the cloth cap low over her eyes. The boy reached toward her face, and she flinched back.

  “Hold still.”

  He tucked a couple of loose strands of blond hair into her cap, and she felt his fingers brush the tops of her ears.

  “All right, lemme see your hands.”

  She held them out, and he took them, turning them over. She saw how clean and white her hands were compared to his. There was a small coal fire burning in front of the stand they’d stopped beside, and he bent and gathered soot and ash from the fire and rubbed the warm black powder over her palms and fingers and the backs of her hands. Then he reached up—Kate held still this time, though to her annoyance the trembling in her chest had returned—and brushed his fingers over her cheeks and forehead. She stared at his face as he did so, the deep-set green eyes, the slightly crooked nose, and she noticed how carefully he avoided her gaze. She had the strange sense that he was as nervous as she. He stepped back, clapping off the excess soot on the legs of his pants.

  “There. You could walk past an Imp now, and he wouldn’t know you.”

  “Thank you,” Kate said, her voice fainter than she would’ve liked.

  “So what’s this then?”

  It took Kate a moment to understand what he was holding; and by the time she realized that he had her mother’s locket, that he must’ve taken it from her pocket while he’d been checking her wardrobe, Rafe had snapped it open and was looking at the decade-old picture of her and Michael and Emma.

  “Give that back!”

  Kate snatched the locket from his hand and clutched it tight in her fist.

  “I wasn’t going to steal it,” the boy said. “But you should get a chain instead a’ keeping it in your pocket. You’ll lose it that way.”

  “I had a chain,” Kate said angrily. “I traded it for this coat.”

  “Yeah? Well, if it was gold like that locket, you got robbed.”

  “And you would know all about robbing someone, wouldn’t you?”

  Her face was hot, the nervousness gone.

  “So who are they? In the picture?”

  Kate stared at him, weighing whether or not to respond. “My brother and sister,” she said finally. “The picture’s ten years old. They’re the reason I need to get back.”

  “What about your parents? Where’re they?”

  Kate said nothing, and the boy seemed to understand. They stood in silence for several seconds, then Kate said:

  “So is that it? I’m hungry.”

  She started to walk away, but Rafe placed a hand on her arm. “I’ll show you the place.”

  He turned down a narrow street and led her to a flight of stairs, at the top of which was a red door marked with a symbol Kate couldn’t read.

  “That’s it there.”

  Kate started up the stairs, not intending to say goodbye, when the boy said:

  “I shouldn’t have taken your locket. I’m sorry.”

  Kate stopped. She was two steps above him. She knew for certain then that he had come to Chinatown to find her and that he was indeed sorry. She thought again of her encounter with Scruggs that morning and heard herself say:

  “Why don’t you come in?”

  He shook his head. “I ain’t hungry.”

  “But you haven’t eaten, have you? I mean … I hear this is the best place in Chinatown.”

  He looked at her a moment longer, then nodded and stepped up past her and opened the door. A pair of rugs hung from the ceiling a couple feet inside the restaurant, providing a buffer against the cold, and Rafe waited there till Kate had closed the door behind her. For a moment, the two of them were standing close and facing each other in the small space, then Rafe pushed through the rugs, and they stepped into the restaurant.

  It was loud, crowded, and smoky, and the air was heavy with the smell of cooking oil, onions, and ginger. There were long tables with benches, all of which were full, and there was a counter at the back for more diners, and behind the counter at least a dozen cooks were taking orders and shouting while passing bowl after steaming bowl out into the waiting hands of the crowd. There were several groups of dwarves scattered among the tables, but most of the diners were Chinese men, all of whom, it seemed to Kate, were speaking at once, and everyone was packed in so tight and close that Kate felt herself retreating from the press of bodies.

  “There they are,” Rafe said, pointing to where Jake and Beetles and Abigail were stuffed together at a table and waving.

  “There’s no room,” Kate said.

  “We’ll sit at the bar.”

  And he took her hand and led her through the throng and found space at the counter. They were crammed in tight, shoulders, elbows, and hips pressed against the diners on either side and against each other. There was a short wall separating the counter from the cooks’ area, and Kate watched a young Chinese man dice an onion with such blurring speed that she was sure several fingers would end up in someone’s soup.

  Rafe spoke to the cook and, a moment later, two steaming bowls of honey-colored noodles landed before them. The noodles were served in a milky broth, and she could see, but not identify, various vegetables and herbs floating among hunks of egg and chicken. Rafe handed her a set of chopsticks, and she watched how the boy balanced his own between his fingers and the crook of his thumb. He saw her staring.

  “They don’t have these where you’re from?”

  “We have chopsticks. I’ve just never used them. Especially not with soup.”

  He grinned; it was the first time he’d truly smiled a
t her.

  “It kinda involves a lot of slurping.”

  He demonstrated, shoveling a wad of noodles into his mouth and then sort of vacuuming up the tail ends. The noise it made was tremendous, and only covered by the fact that everyone around them was doing the exact same thing.

  “I guess manners are a modern invention,” Kate said with a smile.

  “Try it.”

  Realizing that she was starving, and that she hadn’t eaten anything since her pasty with Abigail hours before, Kate applied herself to the bowl. The noodles were thick and squishy, and it took her four tries to get one that didn’t immediately slip out of the chopsticks, and even then she bent close to the bowl, fearful that if she brought the noodle higher, she would lose it. The noodle slapped the side of her cheek as she slurped it up.

  “Well?”

  She turned to him, a stunned look on her face. “That’s amazing.”

  “Told you.” And he grinned again.

  For a while, Kate forgot everything but her noodles and was slurping away as loudly as anyone in the restaurant. When she glanced over and saw Rafe lifting his bowl and drinking the broth, she did the same, and after that, she got braver and began lifting the noodles high, sometimes with a piece of egg or chicken, and lowering the whole delicious mess into her mouth; and as crowded and loud and smoky as the restaurant was, and though she was constantly being bumped and jostled, or feeling cold air against her neck when someone pushed through the rugs by the door, somehow it was all wonderful. It was as if Kate had managed to leave outside everything she carried with her on a daily basis, her thoughts of her parents, the need to find them, her constant worry about her brother and sister. Sitting there, wedged at the counter, she was, however briefly, just a girl in a strange, exciting place with a boy her own age.

  “So you’re really from the future?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the Separation, it works? People forget that magic is real?”

  Kate nodded. “Everyone thinks—I used to think—it’s just from fairy tales.”

  The boy idly stirred the remains of his soup with his chopsticks. “Well, maybe Miss B’s right then. Though I still don’t see why we should be the ones hiding.”

  Kate stared at him. An uneasy feeling began to stir inside her.

  “Not all normal humans hate magical people. You can’t judge everyone that way.”

  The boy turned on her. The intensity in his green eyes was like nothing Kate had ever seen. It required effort not to look away.

  “Course they hate us. What do you think happened to Miss B’s arm? Who you think did that?”

  “But it doesn’t make sense. You’re human too! You’re no different. Just, you can do magic.”

  The boy laughed, but there was no humor in it. “You don’t think that’s enough? They hate us ’cause we can do things they can’t. Makes ’em jealous and afraid.” The boy began flexing one of the chopsticks between his fingers. “There’ve been riots in other cities. Mobs burning down magic quarters, chasing folk out, killing them. That’s the whole point a’ the Separation, a way to protect ourselves. Then, even if we’re still living among ’em, they won’t know it. I guess it’s the right thing.” The chopstick snapped, and he laid the pieces down.

  Neither spoke for a moment, then Kate said:

  “Was that you playing the violin this morning?”

  The boy looked at her.

  “I was in the hall,” she said. “I couldn’t help but hear.”

  Rafe nodded. “It was something my mother taught me. From her old village. She always had me play it to her, said it reminded her of home.”

  “Oh. Is she—”

  “She’s dead.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  They were both silent again, which seemed fine, as the restaurant was so loud around them.

  “Hey, you guys done yet?” Beetles and Jake were behind them.

  “Abigail’s outside already,” Jake said. “She says we gotta hurry and get the rest of the stuff. She’s kinda bossy.”

  “I’ll be right there,” Kate said.

  The boys hurried out through the crowd. Kate looked at Rafe.

  “Thank you for lunch.”

  Rafe nodded and then, abruptly, as if he’d made up his mind and feared that if he hesitated he might not follow through, he reached into his jacket and pulled out a small, fat purse.

  “Here. Take it.”

  Kate glanced at the purse, then at him. The boy wasn’t looking at her.

  “What is it?”

  “Money. Enough to get you to that place up north. Or wherever.”

  “I don’t understand. Miss Burke said it would be a few days.”

  “This has got nothing to do with Miss B.”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “There’s nothing to understand.” The boy was keeping his voice low, but he was getting frustrated and when he looked at her Kate saw something like desperation in his eyes. “I’m telling you to go. I’m asking you.”

  “But why’re you doing this now? Now, all of a sudden?”

  “I got my reasons. Just take it. All right?”

  He grabbed her hand and curled her fingers around the purse. Kate felt utterly confused. On some level, she sensed that the boy was trying to protect her; but she also knew there was much he wasn’t saying.

  “And you won’t tell me why?”

  “I can’t—”

  “Or how you know me? Because I know you do. There’s no point in lying.”

  The boy said nothing. Kate pulled her hand away from his. She felt the heaviness of the purse, the shapes of the coins under the old leather. She could go up to Cambridge Falls, find a way back home, be reunited with her brother and sister; but then she would never learn the boy’s secret. And she thought of what Scruggs had said, that the Atlas had brought her here for a reason. Was it possible that this boy was the reason? If so, who was he?

  She set the purse on the bar.

  “Then I’m staying.”

  And she walked out.

  Abigail and the boys were in high spirits after lunch. They went to the firework maker, picked up Scruggs’s order, and then headed back toward the church, laden with their purchases. Kate glanced behind them several times, but could not see Rafe following. She felt deeply confused.

  And then something happened that confused things even more.

  They were walking down a narrow cross street, and as they passed a small house, they saw a dwarf couple—it was the first time Kate had ever seen a female dwarf; mostly, she looked just like a male dwarf without the beard—carrying out furniture to load into a donkey cart.

  “See that,” Jake said. “They’re getting out before the Separation. Probably going to one a’ them big places upstate. What they calling them? Reserves?”

  “Once the Separation happens,” Beetles explained to Kate, “there’re gonna be a few streets downtown that’re only for magic folk. Normal humans won’t even know they’re there. But dwarves and gnomes and stuff, all them that can’t pass for human, or that can’t afford glamours to disguise themselves, lots a’ them are getting outta the city for good.”

  Suddenly, something struck the dwarf in the head, exploding all over his face and shoulders. It was a snowball, Kate realized, and then another struck the dwarf’s wife, hitting her square in the back. A few more snowballs smashed against the cart. Kate saw three surly-looking teenagers across the street, packing snowballs and jeering.

  “Go on!”

  “Get outta here!”

  “We don’t want you!”

  They threw another volley of snowballs, striking both dwarves and knocking a small figurine off the pile of goods in the cart. The figurine hit the curb and shattered. Kate started forward, furious, not sure what she was going to do, certain only that she was going to do something, when Abigail grabbed her arm and pulled her back.

  “Let me go! Don’t you see what they’re doing?”

  “Better not make tro
uble,” Abigail said quietly. “Rafe says we’re supposed to keep clear when things turn bad. They’re okay. See?”

  Leaving the pieces of the figurine on the sidewalk, the dwarf and his wife had climbed into their cart and were driving down the street, pursued by the taunts and snowballs of the teenagers.

  “Come on,” Abigail said, and pulled Kate away.

  Kate was deeply troubled by the incident. So was everything Rafe had told her true? The teenagers seemed to hate the dwarves for no reason but that they were different. She felt sick to her stomach.

  “So it’s really always like this?”

  Abigail laughed. “That ain’t nothing.”

  “It’s worse?”

  “Worse? You heard what happened to Rafe’s ma?”

  “What’re you talking about? She’s dead.”

  “Yeah, and how’d she die? Some human without a drop a’ magic in him killed her.”

  “What?” Kate stopped in her tracks.

  “No one talks about it, but we all know. Why you think Rafe hates them so much? And he’s gonna be real powerful someday. I heard Scruggs telling Miss B—”

  Kate grabbed the girl’s arm and wrenched her around. “What did you hear? Tell me.”

  Abigail seemed surprised at Kate’s vehemence. “Nothing, really. Just I’d gone up to the belfry—they didn’t know I was there, see—and I heard ’em talking about Rafe.”

  “And what did Scruggs say? Please, Abigail, this is important.”

  “Just what I told you, that Rafe is gonna be a real powerful wizard. Why?”

  Kate had no answer. All she had was her deep conviction that Rafe was connected to her, and not just to her but to Michael and Emma, to the search for the Books. But how? And was he their friend or enemy? She needed to know.

  Just then there was a pounding of feet, and they turned to see Beetles and Jake running toward them, red-faced and grinning.

  “We gotta go!” Beetles said.

  “Why?” Kate said. “What happened?”

  “Remember how we weren’t supposed to do nothing?” Jake said. “Well, we didn’t do that.”

  “We threw some snowballs,” Beetles explained. “We didn’t think they’d be magic or nothing, but after we threw ’em, the snowballs started changing colors on their own and getting all goopy and—”