I See Fire | Wattys 2021/22 Shortlist | ✔

Chapter Forty

How close had I just gotten to going out of control? I sank to my knees, suddenly hyperventilating as the heat built up in my lungs. It was like damming a river. The fire whirled inside my body, angry and insatiable, and I broke out in a sweat as I battled to keep it in. Was this how I would burn? Either consumed by the fire I released, or consumed by the fire I withheld? If I let it go again now, I would never be able to stop. But if I didn't...

The intensification was slowing. My vision blurred for a moment as the heat peaked, raking my throat raw like I was breathing fire itself. Then, slowly, it began to subside. I could hold out. I closed my eyes and focused on keeping the other fuels blocked as the fire that self-perpetuated when released ran out of extra energy and shrank inside of me. When it bottomed out as a warm knot in my chest, I opened my eyes.

Too close. But at least I knew my limit now. My gaze lingered hungrily on the bushes ahead. I wanted to keep burning. So long as I didn't go that far again, that was okay, right?

Exhaustion should have taken me by the time I emerged out the other side of the thicket. I felt nothing. Ahead, bare ground gave way to rocks: round boulders this time. A path snaked between them. Nothing was ever that easy down here. My magic yearned to turn around and go back to the bushes. I wanted to keep burning. I tried to make flames again, then slammed my stick against a rock when it just smoked harder. It didn't even jar my hands. I could hardly keep a handle on my normal sense of touch beneath the heat that engulfed it.

Tochtli was not happy about the path ahead. I picked up a rock and threw it down the open trail. Nothing happened. I strode three paces after it and leaped as an arrow missed my chest by inches. Shadows moved between the boulders. I was off the path again before another fired.

I was so done with this place. I imagined shunning the path altogether, jumping through the bushes and turning whatever lived there to smoke and ashes. The thought made me far too excited. I sank my fingernails into my arms until they nearly cut skin. Sense took hold again, but it was a tenuous hold.

What had I seen that could defend against arrows? In my mind, they shattered against turquoise and deep purple wards. I wasn't a spellcaster. I needed a shield. I turned back to the thicket to look for wood, only to find that the destruction I had inflicted had spread far beyond my shattered path. Bushes as far as I could see were leafless and withered. Dry like firewood.

I jammed my walking stick into the ground. Before it could tempt me to kill more bushes, I set out at a walk parallel to the rocks' edge. The path through the boulders never went away. Every time I lost sight of it, I would round the next corner to find it once again winding away into the distance, to be lost in the gloom.

I found living bushes again eventually. The first one I cut a branch from crumpled immediately. Gods, did every part of me burn things now? I barred my magic from the bush, but it strained at my fingertips, threatening to slip my grip at any moment. It was stronger than before. It kept strengthening. Part of me rattled with alarm at that thought, but another brushed the worry aside.

Still, I couldn't handle wood if I had this tenuous a hold on my fire. I needed water. Could I make water? I tried, and generated a small puddle that radiated death into the grasses. It then evaporated before my very eyes, shrinking to a wet spot that vanished with an almost petulant hiss. I'd do this the hard way, then. My hands took another burn as I summoned a large gourd. I retraced my steps through the thicket, back towards the blood-river.