Undone

“I couldn’t do this before,” he admitted to me one afternoon, after a long day of working with a team of Fire Wardens to help contain a major conflagration across the border in Arizona. “Work all day like this, I mean. You help a lot. You’re learning fast.”

It was surprisingly touching, receiving even such a casual compliment. I nodded carefully, wiping my forehead free of a light beading of sweat. We were outside at the fire, not in the office, and we stood at the boundary of the area in a section deemed safe. I had not seen the Fire Wardens, but that was because (Ma

No doubt the human firefighters around us were a part of that, as well—they were filthy, exhausted, hunched empty-eyed on camp chairs as they drank cold water or ate what the volunteers had brought for them. Brave, all of them. None of them had to be here, and I was only now begi

I could not help but honor them in turn.

Ma

Another one? I had been hoping for home, a bath, and bed, but I kept silent as we walked to Ma

I was getting used to the stink of the internal combustion engine, but it still seemed wrong after the cleaner organic compounds in the smoke of the forest. I rolled down the window and took in slow, shallow breaths. After a moment, I realized that I was covered with a faint layer of soot, and the need for a bath climbed higher on my priorities. Just a little, I thought. Just enough to make myself clean.

It was a selfish use of my hoarded power, but I couldn’t stand being dirty. I used a light brushing of it to sweep off the soot, just as Ma

Ma

My power levels were still adequate, if not strong; I wouldn’t need to draw again for some time. “I’m fine,” I assured him. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll love it,” he said, and gri

“The fire,” I said. “I thought there would be more attention put to it by the Wardens.”

Ma

We drove fifteen miles on a rutted dirt road and turned into an equally rutted dirt driveway, crossing a metal grating with bone-jarring thumps. When Ma

There were none, except for a small house and a large storage building—a barn?—still distant. No sign of anyone nearby.

Ma

“Where are we going?” I demanded again, more sharply. Ma

“Right there,” he said, and I heard that tone again, as if this was providing him some subtle amusement. And he kept walking toward the area he’d indicated.

Which was, in fact, a cattle pen. Inside of it, the huge beasts milled, bumped against each other, made low sounds of either contentment or distress.

As I walked nearer, I began to perceive the smell.

I stopped. “No.”

“Part of the job, Cassiel,” Ma

The beasts took little notice of his arrival. I held my breath, hovering at the barely acceptable limits of the rich, earthy stench, as Ma

“Checking them out,” he called back. “We’ve had some outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease around here, and even one case of mad cow we were able to cure. But we have to stay on top of it. One scare like what happened in Britain, and the beef industry is in real trouble. Used to be another Earth Warden around here who specialized in this stuff, but he’s gone.”

“Can’t you do it from a distance?”

“Yes.” He flashed a grin in my direction. “It just isn’t as much fun as seeing the look on your face.”

I gave him a long, long stare. I imbued it with all the Dji

A strange silence fell over the land, a hush that prickled along my nerves like a storm of needles, and I stopped, turning my head, searching for the cause of it. Something . . .

“Cassiel!” Ma

I whirled, heart pounding, as I felt the surge of power roar through the air, swirling around the cattle pen.

A whirling, invisible cyclone of energy separated me from Ma

A cow trumpeted in panic and pain, shook its head, and toppled to its knees. It hit the trampled ground with a thud and thrashed, screaming.

Another.

Another.

“Ma

It didn’t help. Dji

It was a noose, and the noose was drawing tighter. I did not stop to think. I plunged into the storm.

The force hit me with staggering intensity, whipping my fragile body, punching into my head and soul like red-hot needles. I struggled on and felt cold metal under my searching hands. The fence. I wriggled between the bars and fell into soft dirt, bathed in the stench of the cattle and their leavings. That no longer mattered.

I crawled. The pressure against my head eased first, and then my shoulders, as I inched farther into the temporarily safe area inside the cattle pen.

Not so safe as all that. I heard the panicked bellows of the cattle, and massive sharp hooves stomped the ground beside my head. I heaved myself up just as Ma

“What the hell are you doing?” he shouted at me, and swung me out of the C me>

The cow entered the wall, wailed an eerie cry, and toppled to its knees, then to its side.

Dead.

I felt the breath stop in my lungs. I might have died. It had not occurred to me because Dji

The power took on a reddish hue and crept in another foot, forcing the cattle back. Whether we risked the barrier or not, we would eventually be injured, and probably killed, by the panicked beasts.