“Papa, how did you meet Mother?”
Jey and I were at an age when everything required explanation. We were scientists.
Our father sat back in his not-quite-big-enough-for-three bed. The candle on his bureau guttered and rain clattered against the dark window that looked out onto Saltball Street. Every few moments, lightning would flash, but the thunder was safely grumbling in another part of the city. It was time for us to return to our own beds.
“Haven’t I told you?” Papa said, tousling Jey’s hair.
“No,” I said, wise to his tricks, “you haven’t. How did you meet her?”
He frowned, then smiled, and we knew we were going to get the truth. “Years ago, before we moved to Val Chorm, I was apprenticing with the head gardener to the Commandant. He sent me to gather fire truffles near Mol’s Mouth.”
“You went up Mol? To the top?” Jey’s eyes were wide.
“I certainly did,” Papa said proudly. “It’s an amazing place. Dangerous and terrible, but beautiful at the same time.”
“Like a raptor,” I said. “If you were a mouse.”
Papa nodded and patted my hand. “Just like that,” he said. “Now, fire truffles are very difficult to gather—that’s why they’re so valuable. They grow just at the edges of the lava. They love it, the sulfur and ash. They thrive up there. But that’s treacherous ground to walk. You must wear special clothes that keep the heat away. And if you lose your footing, or if the edge gives way, well, that’s the end of it.”
“I could do it,” Jey said, shaking Papa’s old quilt. “I’m light. I wouldn’t break the edge.”
“I’m sure you wouldn’t,” Papa said. “I wasn’t so lucky, however. After hours of searching, I spotted a whole cluster of fire truffles along a little glowing stream. In my excitement, I stepped too heavily on a crust of ground, and my foot broke through onto the lava.”
I touched a ridge in the quilt. “That’s why you have a metal leg?”
Papa put his hand over mine. “It’s not very cuddly, is it?”
“No,” Jey said. “And it makes you move funny, and then people stare.”
I patted the metal rod through the bedding. “But it’s good,” I said. “It means you can still walk.”
“Yes, it does, and I’m very grateful for that,” Papa said. “I’m even more grateful for your mother, who answered my cry for help. She pulled me away from the lava and called the fire off me.”
“What did Mother look like?” I asked.
Papa’s gaze traveled back in time then, and with a wobbly voice, he said, “She came out of the lava like a person diving into water. Only up. The air was the water, and she burst into it.”
“You can’t dive in the water,” Jey said. “It’s too hot.”
“Some water is fine for diving.” Papa smiled at her. “I know you don’t remember the lakes of Val Chorm, but—well, never mind. Your mother came because I called her—that’s the only way she could come. And as she called the fire off me and out of my skin, I spoke to her. She was very curious, just as you girls are. I spoke with her about the only subject I had any knowledge of: plants. She was fascinated. There are no plants where she came from. She wanted to see them. So … she did. I took her down the mountain and showed her the marvelous trees and flowers of Caldaras.”
“And you loved her,” I said.
I had never seen Papa cry before that moment, and I have not seen it since, but as he looked at me, his eyes shone like the morning mist off Lake Azure Wave.
“I loved her very much,” he said.