Chapter Thirty-Seven

The thrum of fire inside Tara subsided to gentle warmness. She lay motionless, feeling the rain cool her skin while an inferno of conflict burned her thoughts. She felt defeated, scorned by a goddess. But the experience… Felicima herself… and the man… Taros, he claimed to be during the vision—or was it real? Her father, the shappan who died in battle according to Tara’s mother and uncle, had saved her from certain death—if he had been there at all.

Tara opened her eyes. The rain poured down like nothing she had ever seen, much less expected, upon the Forbidden Waste. Water had nowhere to go, here in the world of sand and dust, and it rushed downward toward a watershed unseen except in times of flood. It found it, now, just to the north, in the ancient riverbed. There it gathered and collected before rushing downstream toward freedom and a better climate.

“Father,” Tara called out for a ghost who never existed, her voice raspy and strained, “are you there?” She scrambled to sit up and searched her body for wounds, finding only eight punctures—four on her left leg and four more on her left arm. They were strange wounds to discover when searching for burns. No fire had seemed to have damaged her skin, smooth and of normal coloring as seen through singed and ruined buckskins.

The wind howled and the rain seemed to pick up, falling heavier than before. Unable to see the night sky through the storm, she could no longer judge direction. Tara scanned the desert for a familiar landmark. A screech made her turn. Twenty feet away she spied the same sort of raptor as seen before. It rose from the ground just as a lightning flashed, revealing a plume of red, orange, and yellow feathers fanning out. The bird made for an outcropping a short distance away. Tara ran as fast as she could toward the shelter it offered.

She collapsed, panting on the ground and the bird landed a few paces away. It screeched again, waddling toward something struggling above the rocks. Tara recognized where she had left her snare. Realizing she had caught food, her stomach roared to life with a rumble that reminded the girl she had not eaten for several hours. Finding the strength to stand, she investigated the trap. The bird merely watched, inclining its head as the human walked by, making no effort to move out of her way.

“You’re an odd bird,” Tara said, and it made no attempt to argue.

The crude trap had snared a rabbit, one of the longer types with tall ears found in both the waste and on the steppes. Though lean, it would feed her well if she could manage fire. She cursed Teot for taking her tinder pouch, flint and steel, unable to replace any of them for a long time. The tinder alone would be difficult to gather until everything dried again after the storm. She forcibly held the animal down and broke its neck. This time the colorful bird did not complain.

Returning to the campsite with the hare now tied to her belt, she watched the raptor as it seemed to celebrate her kill. It hopped around on the exact spot she had lit a fire before, spreading its wings as if miming the flames. It cawed and crackled its voice as well, sounding oddly like sparks.

“I can’t,” Tara told it. “I’ve nothing to light one with.”

Without warning, the bird rose up into the air and disappeared for a few minutes, returning with a fallen branch gripped in its talons. The limb appeared heavy, certainly found miles away, but the bird carried it effortlessly.

Tara rubbed at the puncture marks on her arm and an idea struck her. “Did you carry me from the caldera?” she asked.

The bird replied with a higher pitched screech, one less alarming this time.

“I should have known better to believe a ghost carried me out. The entire experience must have been in my head, then.” With a heavy sigh, she thought again of the conversation with Felicima and her other selves.

She opened her mouth to speak, ready to add something about how she should have known the goddess wasn’t real, but caught herself. I’ve no way to know what’s real or not now. Either way, she had experienced a vision and faced choices.

“I’ve got to give him up, you know,” she said to the bird. It cocked its head as if listening. “The boy I love,” she explained. “His named Robert, and I’m to choose between life as a Pescari or be with him.”

The bird waddled closer and gently nudged the rabbit with its beak, then backed up and again imitated the fire.

“I said I can’t do it. I don’t have the tools.”

The bird gave up, waddling to a dry spot in the cleft of two rocks and nestled inside to rest.

“I guess you need a name,” Tara offered.

The bird perked up its head.

“You seem to like fire, so I should call you Blaze.” The resulting screech was deafening, and Tara had to cover her ears. “I’m sorry,” she screamed. “How about Ember?”

The bird immediately settled down.

“Okay, then. Ember it is.” Finding the sharp rock she had used once before, Tara cleaned and skinned the rabbit while Ember napped in the corner. Adsil had taught her the importance of cleaning game, and she now could wait up to half a day before finding a way to cook or dry the meat. Unable to sleep, she busied herself by breaking branches off the larger limb and making a pile. Luckily, the rain hadn’t fully soaked into the wood, and it was dryer than she believed.

The rabbit fur was mostly dry as well, and she pulled several handfuls to use as tinder. Placing it among the smaller, driest branches, she tried rubbing two larger sticks together. She had seen Adsil do this once, but he admitted at the time it wasn’t the best way. The goal was to generate heat by the rubbing. All it did for Tara was frustrate and fuel hidden anger. Neither of the sticks heated up at all during the process, and she threw them down and cursed.

She felt a nudging on her arm and looked over to see Ember had awakened, coming close enough to touch.

“What is it?” she asked. The bird pointed its beak at the pile of tinder. “You want me to keep trying?” the girl asked, picking up the sticks. Ember let out a screech, the one Tara now associated with no. “What, then?”

This time, the bird nudged her arm where the puncture marks had been. Tara looked down and gasped. All four on her arm had fully healed. To be certain, she also checked her leg and found the same condition.

“How?” she asked, then understood. The second Tara in the vision, the girl whose eyes burned with fire, could wield it.

Her father’s words echoed in her mind. You have used it as well.

“Certainly not!” she whispered, then placed both hands on the tinder. She focused her mind on this single goal, to give off enough heat to spark a tiny flame. But she had absorbed so much without knowing; first at the schoolhouse during her fight with Greta Greenbriar, then from Kailani’s oven, and most recently she absorbed directly from the caldera.

The flame that poured out was unfettered, uncontrolled, and lit everything flammable under the outcropping. Ember leapt up, rejoicing, dancing in the flames as they rose into the sky, swirling with plumed feathers unharmed and made brighter by the heat. Even Tara, who recoiled expecting the fire to burn her skin, found it cool to the touch. She stood and, like her new feathered friend, danced in the fire and laughed with joy.

Tara had made her choice and had become Felicima’s chosen agent.