Summer Sword

by James Livingood

  Chapter 1

  Kindling

  I stand alone deep in a forest. My camping equipment and supplies will last another day or two, if I conserve my smore intake. The truth is that I was glad for the extra day camping. With my friends around, I didn’t want to think about my recent unemployment. Now that they were gone, I could spend some time thinking about what to do next. I’ve always felt a connection to the forest, so I hoped that this would help clear my mind.

  In the corner is my one-person tent, brand new. Next to the tent is my red cooler, brand new. On the picnic table nearby lanterns rest, brand new. This trip had cost me so much. If I had known I would have been let go right before the trip, I would have saved the money. The thought crosses my mind that I could live out here from now on, but the idea evaporates quickly. I have a house and a life back home I need to maintain. I don’t want to be known as some weird mountain hermit.

  ‘Remember Wyatt?’ My friends would wonder. ‘Oh! The foul-smelling bearded man in the woods! Yeah, he went crazy after losing his job.’

  I didn’t like the idea of my friends thinking of me in that way. No, instead I would just spend some time looking into a fire and decide what I wanted to do next. Part of me screamed that I was a fool to spend one more minute in the woods. I should be back home applying for jobs and begging my professional contacts for “anything”. Still, I stubbornly sat near the cold fire pit. After all, I had paid good money for this camping equipment and wanted to get my money’s worth.

  Deciding to have a fire, I got up and walked to the wood pile. I grabbed some smaller wood pieces and an old newspaper nearby. I walked over to the picnic table and grabbed the box of matches. I balled up the newspaper and threw it into the fire pit. I then toke the small pieces of wood and leaned them against each other. I lit the newspaper in several spots. As soon as the paper is caught in flame, I grabbed a larger log and set it in the middle of the fire pit. As the smaller piece of wood catch, they fuel a flame on the larger log. Soon the larger log is aflame and I added in a second log. Satisfied with my fire, I go to my cooler, grab a cold drink and walked back to my camping chair.

  Time passed and the second log was starting to finish up burning. I was no closer to a solution to what to do with my life. I was thinking about perhaps visiting my old boss when I heard an odd “pop” from the fire.

  “Ow!” came a tiny voice from the second log. I wondered if that was wind escaping from the log in a weird way. I wasn’t sure if I had heard correctly. Still, since I am alone, no one can judge my oddities. I decided to call out.

  “Hello? Is anyone there?” I move my head around and looked for an answer.

  “Hi!” came the tiny voice again.

  “Ummm… hello? Where are you?” I kept moving my head around to see. I arched my back out of the chair to see behind where I was sitting.

  “Here!” said the tiny voice from the fire.

  I darted my head forward and asked “Here, where?”

  “The fire.” Said the voice.

  Perhaps I needed to go home and stop thinking so much. The fire talked to me. That couldn’t have been a good sign. It was a good sign I was closer to being a mumbling mountain man.

  “The fire?” I asked, “How can you be in the fire?”

  “I burn pieces to see your world, Wyatt.”

  “How do you know who I am?” alarm reached my voice. Maybe my friends were playing a practical joke on me with a hidden recorder? Pretend to go home, and then chuckle at the unemployed guy talking at the fire?

  “I saw you with your friends yesterday. I didn’t want to talk to all of them because they would ignore me or put the fire out.”

  “So, what are you? Are you some tiny fire creature?” If this is my friends playing a joke, their sides must be aching from laughing.

  “I am Thunder Born, a wind esper. Nice to meet you!” said the fire.

  The wind caught the smoke in a twirl, and a shape appeared above the fire. The smoke curled in a pillar and towards the top was the face of a young man. The young man looked like a reflection of myself. Perhaps this wind esper thought seeing my face staring back at me would help ease my tensions. Instead, the hair on the back of my neck felt cold, despite the nearby fire. The smoke curled toward me, and an approximation of a hand was thrust in my direction.

  Blind instinct on greeting a human took over. I reached for the hand to shake it. As I tried to grasp, the gray and black hand poofed away, dispersed between my fingers.

  “Nice to meet you too…” I stumble out the words. “Why are you here?”

  The smoke started to regress and turn into normal camping smoke. I heard feet crunching far behind me. The wind esper no longer said anything as someone approached nearby.

  “Hello there!” said a cheerful female voice.

  “Hi,” I responded back, twisting around to see them.

  The woman had jean shorts on and a plaid button up. Her boots were a light leather color. I could tell that they were made for hikes. Behind her, I could hear a guy puffing trying to catch up. He wore slacks and dress shoes. It was obvious that he was not made for hikes.

  The couple turned out to be nice. He was a bank manager; she was a photographer. By my guess, her photography portfolio was filled with nature shots. Her passion for perfect lighting was obvious as she eyed the forest, clicking out a few photos. The interruption was welcome, as I worried that my mind had been cracking. I was glad to provide some drinks for the conversation. When they half-jokingly asked for smores I felt that was a little rude. Still, I had the supplies, so I decided to oblige them.

  Once they left, two worries crept into my head. One was that the fire would start talking to me again. The second was that I had squandered a rare conversation with polite greetings. What should I ask the being if it shows up again? I had a few different potential ideas to ask when the smoke began to curl back into a pillar.

  “Hi!” came the voice again.

  Deciding not to waste time on a polite conversation, I asked “Why are you talking to me?”

  “My fellow wind espers hurt me,” said Thunder Born.

  There was an awkward silence after that. I was waiting for more explanation but was not getting one. I decided to pry a little more. “What do you want me to do about that?”

  Thunder Born appeared to take a moment to think about this question, and then replied “Nothing. I just need a friend who can’t murder me.”

  I took a few moments to wonder what kind of wild world this creature must live in. With sad realization, I decided that the human world had some of the same problems. True, none of my friends were out to murder me, but there were people like that.

  “Why can’t I murder you?” I asked. The moment the words left my lips I felt horrible. Had I just threatened this rare creature? I hoped this wind esper wouldn’t take offense. The fire began to pop in quick succession. I push my chair back wondering if Thunder Born was angry with the question.

  “Sorry to laugh,” said the wind esper, “you amaze me. I use an outer dimension to think, but my body is wind. Even now, I am compressing the fire in a special way to create unique human popping noises that sound like words.”

  “I don’t understand. Can I put a log on?” I point toward a log near the wood pile.

  The pillar of smoke bends forward several times to affirm that adding another log to the fire would be okay. I grab the log and lean it over a space on the fire. The log quickly catches fire.

  “So, how do humans amaze you… Thunder Born?” I ask as I settle back into my chair.

  “A physical being doesn’t steal wind, so you can’t take my pieces. What amazes me is how you think without an outer dimension. After all, how can a creature know itself without an outside perspective?” The smoke began to burst in small pops like it was laughing. “To us, you are like a chair that realized it was a chair.”

  Stunned into silence at the thought, I went to the cooler. I needed to refresh my drink if I was going to continue this
conversation. The ice in the cooler was almost gone, a few cubes floated around, along with pieces of grass. I am not sure how grass got in the cooler, but it seems to happen every time I camp. After choosing one of the last cans, I made my way back to the seat.

  “So, why haven’t I heard of more of you wind espers contacting humans?” I ask Thunder Born, looking to pry open the metal prong on my drink.

  “We have, but rarely.” The fire twists for a few moments before continuing.

  Perhaps I struck a sensitive topic, as the pause was much longer than it should be. I start to look around, to see if another person was coming when Thunder Born begins to speak again.

  “I have to pay a piece of me in the fire to talk to you, but I heal it back.”

  “If you heal it back,” my body leans forward, finger out as if to poke the flames “then shouldn’t we hear about it all the time? Wind Espers and humans talking?”

  “When was the last time you threw money in the fire?” Thunder Born leans toward my finger, and points at my hand, “or chopped off one of your fingers and threw it into the fire?”

  “My finger doesn’t grow back” I retort, but take away my hand. I doubt the being can take my finger since I couldn’t shake its hand, but I don’t want to take any chances.

  “It doesn’t? Flesh doesn’t grow back?”

  “Not fingers, Thunder. The skin may, but not fingers,” I started feeling odd, like a serial killer. After all, I am talking to a fire about fingers and flesh.

  “I am glad I am a wind esper then. There are tales of wind espers burning out in a fire.”

  What did death mean for a wind esper? Perhaps they would form back into wind. Perhaps they would become part of a new wind esper.

  “What happens when one of you dies in a fire?” My curiosity stretched toward a solution.

  “You have heard of Djinns? Or Fire Demons? That is what we become. The effect only lasts for a short time, but it is a way of dying in glory.” Thunder Born says, almost in a distant voice. He began to stay still and fade away slightly. He looked distracted and longing for that destruction.

  “If I put out the fire, will you disappear? Will you go and do wind esper things?” I wanted the company and had so many questions. Talking with this being not only distracted me from being unemployed, but helped me feel important.

  “Do you want that? Me to disappear?” Thunder said, snapping back into the conversation.

  “No. I want to be your friend and talk with you more.” I said with honest fervor bubbling in my heart.

  “I would like to be your friend. Just call my name loudly in the air and if I am around I will feed a piece of me into the fire to talk.”

  Our conversation continued into the night until I ran out of firewood and was too sleepy to ask real questions. We had even laughed together. When I tried to roast my last marshmallow, Thunder summed wind around the fire at that point causing a flare. Within seconds the marshmallow was a black char on a stick. It was frustrating but felt good to laugh. I would have to get more marshmallows later. That led to comparisons of how it felt to eat versus taking in wind pieces. It was nice to have a friend in the fire though I am not sure the full ramifications of what we were forging. At least, we were camping friends. At most, we had started a long friendship.

  The next day it rained. It felt like the slowest day of my life. I couldn’t start a proper fire with wet wood. That lazy pattering of rain didn’t keep to a schedule and soaked the day. By the time it was over, the night had already arrived. I didn’t have any dry firewood, so I promised I would make a fire first thing the next morning. I hoped that my new friend hadn’t fled. If I were him, I would have gone to another fire or played in the clouds. The long time spent in my tent had seen me writing lists of questions to ask.

  Was fire the only thing pieces could be fed into? How high could Thunder Born fly? Had Thunder been to space? Could a wind esper be contained or brought into the human world without fire?

  I woke to birds, went pee, then started a fire. I was so excited that I almost skipped going pee first. Yet, I didn’t know if Thunder could see me when I peed, and was shy about the act. After the first few logs were on the fire and going well, I called out Thunder’s name.

  He didn’t show.

  I put another log on and included some branches. The branches would cause a nice smoke for Thunder Born to work with. I called out the wind esper’s name again.

  He didn’t show.

  Panic started creeping toward the back of my neck. Had I squandered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with a wind esper? Was it just my mind breaking and I imagined it all? Had I offered some great insult and Thunder no longer wanted anything to do with me? I continued to call out, yelling until my throat was getting dry.

  He didn’t show.