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“I’m afraid that won’t work, Ana
“The manticore ain’t no beast.”
More laughter. I shoved up against the manticore and kicked at her haunches. But she just slept on.
“This is growing tiresome,” Echo said.
“I know,” I told her. “Suggests you ought to just move on, don’t it?”
Something flashed behind my eyes, and next thing I knew I was standing on the beach, in the cold open wind, next to the bonfire.
This was the closest I’d been to it since the day Naji set it to burning. It was bigger now, the figures writhing in its flames more defined. I could make out the features of their faces. Those faces weren’t something I wanted to see.
“This is much better, don’t you think?” Echo stepped into the hazy golden light. It shone straight through her so she glowed like a magic-cast lantern. “Easier to see each other.”
I kept my eyes on her, even though the fire flickering off to the side made me want to turn my head. Both times we’d gotten rid of her involved hitting her unawares: Naji with his sword, me with my fist. So I did the first thing that came to my head. I lunged at her.
She glided out of the way, and I landed face-first in the sand behind her. I didn’t waste no time feeling sorry for myself – a sucker punch don’t work more than once that often – and twisted around so I could see her again. She floated there beside the fire, her arms crossed over her chest.
“What do you want?” I said. “You know I ain’t go
She sighed. “I really wish you would stop saying that.”
She kept on sizing me up, and I knew there wasn’t nothing she could do or else she would’ve done it already.
“We just go
“That wasn’t my intention, no,” Echo said. And she gave me this hard cruel smile that I didn’t like one bit and gestured at the fire. “This is lovely. The assassin’s handiwork, yes? I’ve seen this sort of magic before. It’s rather unstable.”
She glanced over at the fire. “You don’t spend much time here, I’ve noticed, watching the flames. They’re quite remarkable. I’m sure my lord could teach you to do this sort of thing, if you were so inclined. Our world is the world of magic, did you know? It’s the place all your magic is born.”
“I already know one way to build fires,” I said. “I don’t need another.”
“This isn’t a fire,” she said. “It’s far more dangerous.”
That was when I looked. I tore my eyes away from her and looked at the fire. It’d been tickling there at the edges of my sight all that time, like an itch I wanted to scratch, and I finally turned my head and looked.
It swallowed me whole, all that golden light. Sparks and a warmth like the bright sun at home. The pale northern sun didn’t even compare. And here: Naji’d brought a piece of that familiar sun here, he’d set it to burning on the sand.
The bodies in the flames swirled and danced and called me over.
Echo was up close to me, whispering in my ear, and the fire burned away the coldness of her breath. “You can create that yourself. He’ll never teach you. But we can. I can. You can carry that light with you everywhere you go.”
I stared at the fire, my hands tingling. I tried to tell her I couldn’t do magic. But maybe I could, if I was part of the Mists.
“Who wants to be a pirate when you can be a witch? The most powerful witch the world has ever known. You won’t just control the seas, you’ll control the pulse of life. That pulse is what makes these flames burn. It is what gives power to that silly trinket around your neck-”
That brought me out of myself. She wasn’t offering power, she wasn’t even offering magic. She was after Naji. Always had been.
And the fire, for all its beauty, for all its magic, was still fire. It would only burn me if I got too close. Just as it had done Naji.
I dipped forward and yanked a stick out from under the fire. It was hot, but I didn’t drop it; no, I spun around and flung the stick and the lick of flame at Echo, and her eyes went wide with surprise and then with anger, and then the stick sliced straight through her and she turned to mist and disappeared.
I collapsed on the sand. My hand stung. In the golden light I saw the place where the stick had touched my skin, saw the red line it left there.
The beach stayed empty. The wind howled and the waves crashed down below. I forced myself to stand up, legs wobbling, and began to pick my way across the beach. I didn’t realize I was heading for the cave till I got there and found myself swaying outside its entrance, the dim, flickering light from the campfire casting long uneven shadows.
Inside the cave, Naji groaned.
“Naji?” I stepped in, leaning up against the damp stones for support. Naji was curled up in front of the fire, his hands pressing up against his forehead. He stirred when I said his name.
I shuffled forward and knelt beside him. Prodded him in the shoulder. He lifted his head.
“What did they do to you?” he rasped.
“Nothing.” I leaned back, didn’t look at him. I was too tired to be embarrassed. “Tried to get me to hand you over. I didn’t, course, even though–” I decided not to finish that thought.
Naji stared at me. “What?” He pushed himself up. He was pale and ashen, his scars dark against his skin. His hair hung in sweaty clumps into his eyes. “Wait, you mean the Otherworld…” He collapsed back down on his back, looking up at the ceiling.
“Of course I mean the Otherworld. Who else would be chasing after me?”
“The flames,” he said. “I felt them. The heat…”
I kept real quiet. My hand started stinging again, and I had to look at it. A thick red line cutting diagonal across my palm.
“We were by the fire,” I said. “Echo took me there.”
“Echo?” Naji sat up again. He didn’t look so pale no more. “You know her name?”
“It ain’t her name. It’s what she told me to call her.”
“Oh, of course.” Naji closed his eyes. “She can’t hurt you, you know.”
“I know. The charm.”
Naji looked at me, looked at the charm resting against my chest.
“So why in all the darkest of nights did you touch the flames?”
“What?” I slipped my hand behind my back. “The hell are you talking about?”
“The flames, Ana
“I don’t need you to save me.” I stood up. “And it’s not like you want to save me anyway.” Naji didn’t move, his eyes following me across the cave as I scooped up the cooking pot we’d filched out of the Wizard Eirnin’s house. I set water to boiling on the fire.
“You still touched the flames.”
“Do I look like I touched any flames?”
Naji got real quiet, and his eyes darkened, and he tilted his head so his hair fell over his scar. I felt suddenly sheepish.
“I didn’t touch no flames,” I said. “But I yanked out one of the sticks to send Echo back to the Mists.”
Naji glared at me.
“Had to use something,” I said. “Didn’t have your sword.” The water was boiling. I poured it into one of Eirnin’s tin cups and dropped in the flat green leaves Naji used to make tea. Some herb that only grew in the north. I didn’t know its name.
“That was very stupid,” he said.
“It was just a stick!”
“It burned you.”
He said this more gently than I expected, but I still shoved the tea at him, sloshing a little across his chest. He glanced down at it like he’d never seen a cup of tea before, but after a few seconds he wrapped his hand around the cup and drank.
“Not bad,” I said.
“What?”
“It didn’t burn me bad.” And I showed him my hand.