On Tuesday, Dustin started sitting with them at lunch, plunking down on the bench next to Alma without comment. It occurred to her that she had never seen him in the cafeteria before. She wondered where he used to sit. Alone somewhere, she guessed.
When he threw himself onto the bench on Friday, he asked, “What are we doing about fire?” He had asked this on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday too. “Let’s do something!”
Shirin eyeballed him over her pizza. Hugo arranged carrot sticks on his napkin.
Dustin may have rescued Alma in the cave, but it didn’t mean that he was welcome or entirely forgiven. Dustin and Hugo still hadn’t talked about their falling-out last summer, and lunches had been tense, with Shirin snapping, “Ugh! Why are you even here?” on more than one occasion and with Hugo reverting to his stiff, robotic behaviors. Alma found that she was no longer afraid of Dustin, not even a little bit, which was good, since most of the time it fell to her to deal with him.
“Without the quintescope, we don’t know what to do,” she said.
“I told you to just steal it back from your dad,” Dustin grumbled.
“I know,” Alma replied. “But my parents are watching me so closely. They’re really worried about me.”
After the meeting with Dr. Parry, she had felt ready to keep searching, but her parents had become more vigilant than ever. Her father had affixed bolts to her windowsill so that she could only open her window about six inches. She had not been allowed to leave her parents’ office after school. She heard them at night sometimes, opening her bedroom door and peeking in to make sure she was there.
So now, days later, they had made no progress in finding the Starling or true fire.
“If only we had the fire container,” Hugo said. “It might give us some indication of the type of fire we need to collect, whether it’s from a wood fire or some sort of chemical fire or—or a volcano?” He shook his head in frustration. “I keep thinking of Mrs. Brisa’s idea to use a lightning rod to ignite a spark, but lightning is incredibly powerful and dangerous. It’s not a real possibility.”
“Let’s read the fire section again,” Alma said, struggling to think of something, anything that she actually could do.
Hugo got out the book and handed it to Alma. She opened to the page with the triangle illustration and read:
Finally, at last, we turn to Fire.
Of all the Elements, it is Fire that is
the most enigmatic and most difficult to obtain.
Fire can destroy and burn down to ash.
Fire can blaze wild and raze field and forest and home.
Yet Fire gives way to new life.
Fire purifies and refines.
And Fire Elementals, they contain their own flames—
of passion and compassion.
Flames that can destroy, flames that can blaze wild.
Yet when these Elementals are their truest
and when they connect—
How their ideas can create worlds!
How their spark can change the Universe!
“You know what? I think that sounds like you, Alma,” Shirin said when she was done. “You’re not very loud about it, but you’re definitely, like, intense. And that’s why we’re on this whole quest in the first place. Because you had so much compassion for the Starling, right?”
Alma shook her head. She had read the fire description over and over, trying to find herself in it. It was the last element, her last chance, and it was easy to identify with the parts about being destroyed, about burning away.
But creating worlds? Changing the universe? That didn’t sound like her one bit.
“Agreed,” Hugo said, to Alma’s surprise. “The quest would have ended many times without Alma’s belief in the Starling. Of course, there are some things I could never have believed in, no matter what. Our pamphlet, as you know, is written by someone who calls himself the True Paracelsus, and I have been reading some of the books the librarian gave us about the other Paracelsus. Fascinating fact: the other Paracelsus thought elementals were gnomes, sprites, mermaids, and magical salamanders!”
Alma and Shirin started to laugh, but Dustin snorted. “More like unfascinating fact.”
Shirin whipped around to snap at him, and her braids knocked her entire tray into her lap. Pizza went everywhere. Hugo and Alma were so used to this that they jumped up to help without even commenting.
Dustin, however, snickered. “Seriously? What’s wrong with you?” he said.
The glare Shirin gave him was as fierce as fire shooting from her eyeballs. Alma imagined Dustin turning into a smoldering pile of ash.
Maybe it was because Dustin’s presence inhibited their conversation or maybe it was because fire really was the most difficult element, but when the bell sounded for the end of lunch, they still didn’t have any real ideas.
“Why don’t we meet tonight?” Dustin demanded as they packed up. “Why do we have to have some perfect plan? I have stuff we can use. We can try different things—see what works.”
Hugo looked like he wanted to say no. Shirin actually did.
“Nope,” she said. “We’re not ready. We’ve been doing this for a while, and the other elements were in really specific places. We didn’t just happen to find them.”
Dustin rolled his eyes and turned to Alma.
“Come on, Alma,” he said. “Remember what it says about the Starling being in mortal peril? Don’t you want to get the last element? We need to finish this!”
When Hugo talked about finding the elements, it was like a puzzle that needed to be researched and solved. When Shirin talked about it, it was like a thrilling adventure. With Dustin, finding the elements was like a mission, something they had to complete.
Alma loved figuring out the puzzle and sharing the adventure. But Dustin was demanding answers so intensely, and Alma found that she agreed with him. It had been over two weeks since the Starling had fallen, and from what she’d seen at the caves, she was running out of time. Even if she didn’t believe that fire was her element, even if she got caught, she had to try.
“I think Dustin’s right,” Alma told Shirin and Hugo. “The Starling’s been here for too long. Somehow we need to get fire. Tonight.”