Chapter 31

Inner Fire

Aliya had never been this tired, but she wouldn’t allow herself to rest. Vali and Quantum had both fallen into an exhausted sleep, but she was still glaring at the ferocious battle of the elements. Fire eating the darkness of the night sky, raindrops hissing into clouds of steam, the beleaguered earth groaning beneath the weight of her failure.

She could never make this right. But she could dream.

In her dreams, she had power—a power she had always been too afraid to claim. In her dreams lay danger, nightmares that could claim her life—but that might also contain answers.

The fire-mountain had refused her those answers. Was she brave enough to risk danger again by seeking them elsewhere?

No. It was too much to ask. She was an accumulation of failures, both in dreams and in the waking world. Azak’s death. And then Churie’s. No training—another failure, her own refusal to learn. Her failures had already cost so much.

But, failing to act could cost a whole lot more.

She had to dream. Dream deep, as only a shaman could.

She lay down and closed her eyes. Let the steady drip, drip of rain in the branches lull her into thinking of sleep as a relief.

She opened her eyes to the stillness of the forest-in-between. Luca’s eyes met hers, mirroring her fear and determination.

‘Are you sure?’ they asked her.

She gave a single sharp nod. ‘Together, we’ll be strong enough. We have to be.’

Luca held out their hand, and she gripped it tightly. Comfort, and a little courage with it, seeped into her palm.

Together, they placed their hands on the nearest tree.

The next thing she knew, she was covered in scorpions and screaming at the top of her lungs. She panicked for a moment—because her host for this dream was panicking—and then thought with that little corner of herself, hang on, I’m not even scared of scorpions. She was dreaming, and this was not her dream.

With a little sideways nudge, she stepped into her own body, which materialised to hold her. Luca appeared beside her, pale and determined.

They were now faced with a middle-aged woman swatting wildly at the scorpions crawling all over her bare skin.

‘What do we do?’ Luca asked, taking a hasty step away from the poisonous arachnids.

‘The best way to stop a bad dream is to wake up,’ Aliya said.

Aliya reached out and grabbed the woman’s arms, pulling upwards—not physically, but mentally rising towards the surface level of the mind. The dream became less substantial, but the woman was not coming with her. She tugged harder, but with no success. Even though her body was only imagination, goosebumps rose on Aliya’s arms. This was no ordinary nightmare.

They had come straight into one of the killing dreams. It couldn’t be coincidence… The sorcerer behind this plague had sensed her familiar presence and was closing in.

The dreaming woman was stung. From where the scorpion had poisoned her, a black stain, like spreading ink, began to creep up her arm. No: Aliya could not stand another defeat.

She grabbed the woman’s face between her hands. ‘You’re dreaming,’ she shouted. ‘None of this is real.’

She plucked up one of the scorpions and it burst into a fountain of soot in her hand. There were so many, and not enough time before the poison spread. Aliya burst another scorpion and threw one to Luca so they could help her stem the flood. They shrieked and dropped it.

‘Luca, you know it’s just a dream,’ she said. ‘When you know you’re dreaming, you can make the dream do anything.’

‘It doesn’t feel like “just” anything,’ Luca said, their breathing accelerating. The scorpion tried to run up their trouser leg and that eventually moved them into action. ‘A dream, a dream,’ Luca muttered and stamped on the creature. It exploded with a satisfying whoosh.

Luca sprang forward to help Aliya, and they both set to frantically pulling scorpions off the woman before they could manage a fatal sting. Now that Luca was over his initial paralysis, they worked seamlessly together, like they could read each other’s minds.

Luca panted for breath. ‘It’s almost as if—’

‘—We’re the same person,’ Aliya finished, laughing in the face of all her fears. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘let’s show this sorcerer that we can beat him.’

They were an unstoppable duo, covered in the black dust of their vanquished foes. But as fast as they were destroying the scorpions, more were appearing.

‘It’s no use,’ Luca said. ‘The dreaming woman is still scared, so she’ll just keep imagining more.’

Luca was right. No matter what they did, this wasn’t their dream, so they couldn’t alter the fabric of it. Only the creator of this world could change its nature. ‘Look,’ she said to the dreamer, ‘this is your imagination; you can change it. Stop focusing on the fear and focus on this: real scorpions aren’t made of soot and ink, are they?’ She caused another of the creepy insects to explode.

At last, the dreaming woman stopped screaming and joined her in transforming the scorpions into clouds of ash. Soon, they were all breathless with effort and exhilaration, and all the scorpions were gone.

The woman asked, ‘Who are you? Are you real?’

‘I’m Aliya, and this is my apprentice,’ she replied. ‘I’m a shaman, and I’m as real as you are.’

Hearing this, the woman looked embarrassed to find she was naked, but Aliya just raised an eyebrow and said, ‘You’re dreaming, remember?’

‘Oh, yes,’ the lady replied, and immediately she was clothed in a rich silk dress, almost certainly something far nicer than she would ever get to wear in the real world.

‘Now, I need your help,’ Aliya told her. ‘This dream is not just an ordinary nightmare. It’s stronger somehow. Stickier… I need to find out what makes it different. Can you see anything in this dream that you wouldn’t expect to find in your own imagination?’

Aliya didn’t want to explain more, didn’t want to frighten her by telling her how close she had just been to death. That fear might make the dream turn nasty again.

The woman obligingly looked around. It was a strange environment, seemingly built of all the things this lady had ever seen or owned. There was a towering wall of teacups and a huge blue ceramic jar that could fit two of Aliya inside. There was a statue of a horse, twice life-size, and a flock of miniature sheep made out of pieces of wire and cotton balls.

‘There!’ the woman exclaimed. ‘That’s…wrong.’

Luca gasped. ‘That’s him! But what’s he got to do with the plague?’

There was a young boy in a glass sphere, his hands pressed against the glass. He was mouthing words, but Aliya couldn’t hear what he was saying. And now, she remembered something Azak had said in their final dream-encounter: his bubble does not protect him. She had forgotten it at the time because the meaning was so obscure, but what if he had been referring to this boy trapped in a cage of glass? And what did that mean—could this child, no more than ten years old, be the sorcerer that was causing these dreams of death? Or was this child another of his victims, an unwilling spy planted in others’ dreams?

She walked towards him, and the boy hammered on the glass as if desperate to break out. But, as she approached, the sphere began to drift away, like a soap bubble caught in the wind. She ran towards it, but the boy and the bubble enclosing him slipped sideways—

Aliya followed the boy and stumbled out of the dream into the silent forest. There, between the trees—the glint of a curved edge of glass was catching the faint light.

Launching herself into a sprint, she fell flat on her face as Luca stumbled out of the tree trunk and slammed into her. By the time she had untangled herself, the boy in the bubble was nowhere to be seen. Gone further into the forest, or dissolved into another dream? She felt around for a signature, an impression of where the boy had been, but she didn’t have a strong enough sense of who he was to be able to track his passage.

She kicked a tree. Her foot went straight into the trunk and she nearly tumbled into another dream. Luca caught her arm and pulled her back.

‘Sorry for making you lose him,’ they said.

‘It’s okay,’ she replied. ‘At least we have a clue. A place to start.’

Her apprentice hung their head.

‘Here, you have scorpion-dust in your hair,’ she said, reaching up to brush it out.

‘I have hair!’ Luca ran their hands through the waves that fell to their shoulder blades.

Why did she end up with an apprentice who never made any sense? But still…

‘I couldn’t have done that without you,’ she said, throwing an arm over Luca’s shoulders and steering them back to her own tree. ‘Before—in Elena’s dream, and Juna’s—I didn’t have the power to shift the nightmare.’

‘You’re stronger now,’ they said.

‘There are two of us now.’

They were back at her tree. It was always easy to find, a gravitational pull, beckoning her back to reality. Or, for Luca, another level of dream. She was too tired for philosophy.

Aliya reached for the trunk, but Luca said, ‘Hey, Aliya. You owe Vali an apology, you know.’

She scowled at them. ‘Do you have to remind me that you’re spying on my every thought?’

She stepped into the trunk of her tree and she was rising, coming awake to dawn light and a blanket wet with morning dew. She lay still and stared up at the pale blue sky. For the first time tonight, she had introduced herself as a shaman; for the first time, she had truly done the things a shaman trained to do. She had saved a woman’s life.

Her stomach shook with silent laughter, the irony of it painful. Now, she understood what Azak had meant: he hadn’t just said listen to the fire, he had told her to find her fire. It was nothing to do with actual fire at all—and didn’t she wish she could have worked that out a little sooner—it was about her inner fire. Her passion. Embracing this quest as her own and fully believing in what she was.

As the sun rose, she felt it settling within her. A new shape for her life. There was pain, letting go of the familiar pattern—but it wasn’t gone forever. She could go back to her safe little life when this glitch was over. But for now, she had to be on fire.

It was time to discover what she could accomplish.

• • •

‘Shamans know how to heal.’ Aliya stared at the shallow, jagged cuts her feet had accumulated as she ran from the volcano; Quantum and Vali stared at her. The wounds did not magically heal themselves.

‘Well done,’ said Quantum quietly.

‘Why? I haven’t done anything.’

‘That’s the first time you’ve ever referred to yourself as a shaman,’ he told her.

Aliya just grunted in response. For now, she needed to accept the things she could do because they were useful; they were the only thing that might lead to this sorcerer. These were extraordinary times, and an extraordinary solution was needed.

With a groan, Aliya flopped back onto her damp blanket. The sky was blue again this morning, the cloud of ash blown away by the storm. The volcano gave the occasional grumble, but there had been no new spouts of lava since the early hours of the morning.

Vali asked, ‘Are you going to sew your feet up?’ His gaze was shuttered. She had the suspicion he was enjoying her pain, and she couldn’t blame him. Her heart longed to apologize, but the words wouldn’t form.

She contemplated her poor feet again. She didn’t think that any of the gashes were deep enough to need stitching—they had all stopped bleeding overnight, anyway. But they hurt, a lot, and she needed to make sure they didn’t get infected.

Herbs. There were lots of plants that were good for healing—if only she knew which they were. Maybe she should ask them. With the way her life was going lately, they might even answer.

There were unfamiliar plants all around her on the hilltop, quite different from those that grew on the prairie. Trying to ignore how ridiculous she felt, she mumbled, ‘Plants of the mountain, please reveal your nature.’

Quantum gave a muffled giggle. The plants, however, did nothing. No real surprise—expecting these little plants to have their own sentient spirit was like expecting to find a water elemental in a puddle. The elemental beings clearly preferred strong and stable homes like deep rivers or ancient trees.

But even tiny plants had energy, a little spark of the same life force that animated the spirits she had met. If she could see elementals, surely she could also sense the energy behind them?

She sent out tendrils of thought, burrowing like roots through the soil and reaching the lives of the green things thrusting up through the earth, sparkling like fireflies with barely contained potential for growth; each of the common, every-day plants around her was a starburst of light and energy. She let out a laugh of sheer joy, and tried to walk forward into the field of light—but the sharp pain in her feet reminded her of what she was trying to do. How could she work out which of these plants had healing properties? She focused on the cuts in her feet, trying to infuse a sense of need into the energy bursting around her. One of the herbs bent towards her, wanting to lend her its energy. She limped over to it and picked a few of the pale, feathery leaves. ‘Thanks,’ she said, even though she knew the plant couldn’t understand her.

She crushed the leaves and mixed them in a little water to make a paste. Then she spread it on her feet and wrapped them up in some clean rags that were all that was left of the shirt she had left home in.

Her shoes were in even worse shape. Where the soles weren’t sliced through, they were charred and cracked from getting too close to the molten rock. There was no saving these. With a sigh, she unpicked the stitching until the soles came free. She would have to cut some replacement leather from the bottoms of her trousers and sew that on. It wouldn’t be strong, but it would be better than nothing.

A little splash of volcanic rock with a neat hole through its middle fell from the toe of her boot. She laughed wryly. Stones with holes in were supposed to be good luck, but the trip to the volcano certainly hadn’t been lucky. She turned it over in her fingers a few times, then pulled the front of her plait free and began to make a small, thin braid down the right side of her face. Near the bottom, she wove in the volcanic stone and tied the braid off with a bit of twine. It swung in front of her shoulder, a reminder she would carry with her. Not of failure, but of a lesson learnt.

She leant back on her hands, taking a deep breath and feeling oddly contented. There was a spark of hope in her chest. Aliya smiled as she watched Vali dump an armful of sticks into the fire pit and get out his flint to light it; Quantum, bouncing excitedly, said, ‘No, let me!’ and blew a stream of flame that incinerated most of the wood. She was lucky to have them; and Meera, of course, her trusty companion. Even though they couldn’t help her in her dreams, they were still a real support.

Vali called, ‘So, we have no food left. Can you do your “thing” again and tell me which plants are good to eat?’ Aliya rolled her eyes. She might be glad to have him here, but he was still an idiot. But, she did her ‘thing’ as he put it and pointed out several edible plants. This was getting easier and easier with practice.

‘Yuck!’ Vali yelled, spitting out the leaf he was chewing. ‘It might not be poisonous, but it’s still disgusting.’ Well, okay, her skills might still need a little work.

‘These leaves look like potatoes,’ Quantum called from the edge of the woods. ‘I don’t need a shaman to tell me that potatoes are good to eat.’

So, they dug up potatoes and baked them in the embers of the fire, ignoring the uncomfortable silence and thinking their own thoughts. It felt good not to be moving for once—but they couldn’t stay here forever.

Aliya told them about the trail of the sorcerer she had found in her dreams and said, ‘So, I know what I need to do when I dreamwalk: protect the people that he’s attacking. But I have no idea what trail to follow out here. I think if I could find this boy in the bubble—I mean, find his actual body, not his dream body—then I could get into his head and find out what’s going on. But I don’t know where to start looking. I don’t have enough of a sense of him to pick up a real-world trail. Maybe he’s not even real, but just a spirit this sorcerer has created. He looks very strange. As pale as if he’s never seen the sun, and with hair the colour of ripe wheat.’

‘That does sound more like some sort of ghost than a real boy,’ Vali agreed.

‘No, I’ve seen people who look like that,’ Quantum told them. ‘There are some blonde-haired folk living on the south coast. They come from Pracsia, on the other side of the sea, where everyone looks that way.’

The world beyond her village was turning out to be a very strange place.

‘Maybe we should head for the coast, then,’ Aliya suggested. ‘Do either of you know how far away that is?’

‘My father makes the trip from Jacinth to the coast in about a month,’ Vali said, ‘but you’ll go faster than wagons would. Maybe ten more days after you get back to the road.’

‘What do you mean, “you”?’ Quantum growled.

Vali wouldn’t meet his gaze. ‘You’ll travel faster without me.’

‘I’m not going to just leave you behind!’ Aliya said.

‘Why not? You left Churie behind easily enough. I don’t want to be part of this anymore. I wouldn’t be here now if there was anywhere else to go!’ He gestured wildly at the forest, the foothills, the miles of empty wilderness enclosing them.

Aliya nodded and cleared her throat so she could force words out. ‘We’ll make sure you get to the nearest village.’

‘If we cut south-east from here, we can join the road further south and save some time,’ Quantum said. ‘Unless you have a problem with that, Vali? Do you want us to backtrack and risk people’s lives so that you can satisfy your stupid pride?’

‘Please, stop,’ Aliya said. ‘I would make things right for everyone if I could. But all I can do is grab onto the slightest chance I have of not making things worse. We’ll head south-east.’

It felt good to have a plan, however vague. This sorcerer wouldn’t be able to hide from her forever: she had his scent now, and she wouldn’t stop until she’d tracked him down.

‘I’m going to find him.’ Aliya was surprised by the confidence she felt; it had become an unfamiliar emotion.

‘Aliya,’ Quantum asked, creeping up her arm to his preferred spot on her shoulder, ‘when you do find him, what will you do?’

‘Ah…stop him, of course,’ she replied, trying to keep the confidence in her voice. It wasn’t something she’d thought about. It had seemed so unlikely that she would get far enough for it to matter.

‘You said this little boy must be a powerful dreamwalker,’ Quantum continued, ‘so a sorcerer that could manipulate him must be even more powerful—’

‘Aliya’s powerful too,’ Vali interrupted. ‘Look how she wrapped that robber up in tree-roots—she could have killed him if she wanted.’

‘No, I couldn’t,’ she responded instinctively. The earth-magic had connected her to him, so how could she have done him harm? She tried to explain. ‘The power comes from seeing how the elements connect to what’s inside me—and everything, everyone, is made up of the same forces. Using that force to hurt anyone would be like hurting myself.’

‘Oh, I know you didn’t want to hurt him,’ said Vali, ‘you never want to hurt anyone, do you? But you still do. You could have hurt him—not with magic, maybe, but he couldn’t move so you could have gone and cut his throat or something.’

‘No,’ she said again, more firmly, ‘I couldn’t. That’s not the sort of person I am. Could you just go and kill someone?’

‘If I had to!’ Vali declared. Aliya stared at him. ‘I’m your guard,’ he said. ‘I have to be able to do what’s necessary to defend you.’

‘Maybe part of protecting me is helping me not to become a bad person,’ Aliya told him. ‘Not being a killer is a good start.’

‘Yeah, it would be, wouldn’t it?’ he muttered bitterly. ‘Maybe you can just conjure up another pit of burning lava and wait nicely for him to fall in?’

The conversation left her disturbed. When they did find the person behind this plague, would she be able to do what needed to be done? Would she need to become the killer Vali saw her as? Was she a good enough person to make the right choice?