Fire Country

I roll over, feign ignorance. “Who’s Lara?” I ask. He grabs me by the arm, his fingers pressing hard into my skin. “Oww! Father, it’s my Call today. Please.”

That works and he let’s go, backs up a step. “Don’t play dumb with me, Youngling,” he barks.

“I’m not a Youngling anymore!” I shout, hoping that matching his anger’ll get rid of him.

“You are until tonight,” he retorts. “Lara’s missing, and I want to know exactly what you know about it.”

~~~

I’m still in shock over the whole thing. Lara’s missing? What? It’s crazy. All this time I thought she was full of hot air, all talk, overcompensating for a future she couldn’t control. But now she’s on the verge of doing exactly what she said she’d do for many full moons: miss the Call. And she’s not the only one missing. There’re a bunch of other Pre-Bearers gone, too.

I didn’t tell my father a searin’ thing. Well, actually, I did, but none of it had a lick of truth. I told him she’s been trying to make friends with me, always bothering me, telling me wooloo things. Well, day ’fore last, she told me she was fixing to run off to ice country just ’fore her Call. Father, I swear I thought it was a bunch of tugblaze or I woulda told you. Please believe me, Father, please!

He bought the whole thing, which is why I’m smiling now. He wasn’t too happy that I hadn’t told him earlier, but he didn’t give me too much trouble over it ’cause I was so cut up about the whole thing. I don’t really know what happened to her, but she seemed to think the Wilds would kidnap her, and maybe that’s exactly what happened. Just like with Skye.

So I’m smiling and humming along to myself as I walk back from my last session of Call Class. I mightn’t be able to get out of it, but I’m glad Lara did. When I reach our hut, my smile vanishes.

There’s one scorch of a commotion outside of our place. A huddle of Greynotes speak in hushed tones. MedMa has his arm on my father’s shoulder and is shaking his head and speaking softly. I ignore them all, push past, make my way to the door.

My father sees me. “Siena, don’t,” he says, but I ignore him, fling open the door.

Evidence of the Fire is everywhere. It’s in the wet towels in the wash basin, in the lingering scent of MedMa’s healing herbs, in the abject silence that seems to surround the room. And ’specially on my mother’s face, which is sheened with sweat, red and white and yellow, sharpened with pain. Her expression is contorted even now, as she tries to smile at me and sit up in bed. “Siena,” she murmurs, her loudest voice but a whisper.

“No, Mother. No.” Tears well up. I won’t go to her. Can’t. If I do it’ll make it real. The Fire. Come into our home to take the last person I have.

“Shhh,” she whispers. “Come to me.”

“No…no.” Tears in streaks on my cheeks. Numbness all over. Where are you, sun goddess?

“It’s going to be fine,” my mother says, a stronger woman’n I’ll ever be.

I keep my distance even though I know the Fire ain’t catching. “Nothing’s fine,” I say.

A shadow splashes me from behind. I don’t turn ’round. “Leave us, Roan,” my mother commands. For once in his life, my father obeys my mother, closes the door softly.

“I can’t do this,” I say, talking ’bout my mother and the Call in one breath.

“You can,” she says, extending an arm. An invitation.

Although I don’t wa

“I’ve felt it coming for a while now,” she says. “But yes, this Fire is faster than most. Mercifully fast.”

“But I’m not ready.” Once more I’m talking ’bout her and the Call. Fu

She laughs but it comes out as a cough. I calm her with a hand on her forehead. The heat is pouring out of her skin like there really is fire in there. There is, I remember. The Fire to end all fires.

I leave her side for a moment, ring out a wet towel in the wash basin, return to her. Dab her face with the towel, wiping away the tears that’ve begun to spring up. “I’ve never done right by you, Siena,” she says, sadness in her eyes.

“No, Mother, don’t say that. You’ve done right by me. Life is just hard sometimes. Father is hard.”

“No excuse,” she says. “I’m going to make it right before I go. I have to make it right.”

“You don’t hafta do anything,” I say. “Just rest, Mother. Just rest.”

~~~

Jade. Skye. Circ. Lara, earlier today. And now my mother, soon to follow, maybe as soon as three or four days ’cause of how fast-acting her Fire is. It feels like everyone that matters to me is gone. Taken for reasons I don’t think I’ll ever understand.

It’s time. Like my sister did not so long ago, I put on my white dress. There’s no one to help me ’cause Sari hates me and mother’s too tired to stand. She watches though, her eyes keen with interest. “You look beautiful,” she says when I finish.

“Skye was more beautiful,” I remember.

“In my eyes, you two will always be the prettiest girls in all of fire country,” she says.

I cast my eyes downward. “Will you be able to come to the Call?” I ask, already knowing her answer.

“Siena, I’m too weak. Far too weak. But I’ll be there in here.” She points to her heart. “And here,” she adds, pointing to my hair. I frown in confusion. “In your hair, silly. I want to fix your hair just right.”

Tears bubble up but I blink them away. I sit on the ground, not caring if my dress gets durty. It’s the only way my mother’ll be able to reach me.

She hasn’t braided my hair in years, but as soon as her fingers slide along my scalp the memories come flooding back. My sister and me sitting side by side as my mother worked on our hair, poking at each other and giggling. Her expert fingers feel the same now, where I can’t see them, almost as if there’s nothing wrong with her at all. As if nothing’s changed.

The only noticeable difference is the speed at which she works, but I don’t know if her slowness is ’cause of the Fire or ’cause she, like me, don’t want this moment to end.

But we both know it hasta.

It hasta.

I try to pull our time together out, stretch it, lengthen it, using the only thing I got. A request. “Tell me more ’bout Brev,” I say.

My mother doesn’t say nothing for a long moment, and I know I surprised her, ’cause her fingers stop working. “What do you want to know?” she asks.

“Everything,” I say and she laughs.

“Now that’ll take more time’n we have,” she says.

“Is that a promise?”

She laughs again and I’m glad. Glad ’cause the Fire ain’t taken her laugh away. Not yet. “I’ll tell you this,” she says, and I lean back against her bed, closing my eyes, trying to picture her at my age. Try as I might, I can’t do it. “We were inseparable. We went everywhere and did everything together.”

Like me and Circ, I think. “What happened?” I ask.

“The Call,” she says and I open my eyes to my future, sitting out in the center of the village, eyes like fire, staring, just staring. I close them again. “We couldn’t be together after that. Sun goddess knows we wanted to, but it wasn’t right—not by the Law anyway. Your father…he was a good man for a good long while.”

But I don’t wa

I can’t see it, but I can feel my mother’s smile, in her fingers, which seem to quicken, working over my strands of hair a beat or two faster. “Somewhere,” she says, but that ain’t no answer.

“Where’s somewhere?”