The Girl Born of Smoke (28 page)

“That’s it then, we definitely have to go
back,” he said firmly. “You’re the key to everything. If you agree
to help the Citizens’ Army, you could fix it all. Once they realize
you’re not going to try and take over and control their lives,
everything will be fine. They’ll help you and protect you from the
others and we’ll make everything right.

With a feeling of dread, she realized he was
unable or unwilling to see past the beliefs of the Citizens’ Army.
She nodded, pasting a smile on her face. “You’re right. I think we
should go back and get help from them.” She noticed he was standing
a distance away from her now and she rose, turning away, hoping her
voice wouldn’t break. “I’m going to go get Djerr and tell him,” she
said. “I’ll be right back.” She rushed off, back toward the rocky
outcrop where she had left Djerr, swallowing the sobs in her
throat.

He was still in the same spot she had left
him, gazing out at the plains, away from her. Tripping on a rock,
she darted forward to keep her footing and almost fell over him.
Instead, she knelt down and wrapped her arms around him. “Let’s
go,” she whispered into his ear.

He turned, seemingly unsurprised, and cocked
his head. “Just us?” he asked. When she nodded, he took her hand
and started leading her toward the narrow ledge that led steeply
down the cliff. The shadows were long around them and he hesitated
before taking the first step.

“Wait,” she tugged her hand away from him
and formed a small globe of light, which she handed to him. It
shone brightly, then dimmed until it barely lit his hand. “Just
tell me how bright you need it,” she said.

He looked at it in wonder for a moment as it
brightened again, lighting the path in front of them.
“It’s…beautiful,” he said in wonderment, bringing it closer to his
face so that it lit up his brown eyes. Then he gently transferred
it to his other hand and took Tarana’s hand in his own and they
started down the cliff.

They traveled long into the night, trying to
get as much distance as they could. They didn’t talk as they
walked, giving Tarana an extended period of time to think about how
they would survive. They had no supplies, no food, and she became
increasingly aware of those two facts as the night grew much colder
and her stomach churned, aching for food.

The mud grew hard beneath her boots,
freezing under the pale moonlight. She had gotten rid of the ball
of light as soon as they reached the bottom of the cliff as it only
made them stand out and the moonlight easily lit their way. They
passed very few trees. The only vegetation seemed to be small
shrubs and prickly bushes that tore at her clothes when she
carelessly swung an arm too near. Djerr stumbled in front of her
and shook his head, apologizing quietly. She caught his arm and
turned him toward her. “Maybe we should rest for a little bit,” she
suggested.

He shrugged and looked around. “That ledge
should give us some cover,” he said, pointing to a small drop in
the landscape, half as tall as her. It’ll be hard to see us, unless
someone’s right on top of us.” She nodded and they made their way
over to it, leaping over some of the smaller bushes. They nestled
down, leaning against the ledge and into each other. Both of their
bodies shivered uncontrollably, their teeth chattering.

Tarana was silent for a moment, thinking.
“There’s a lot of water in the ground, don’t you think?” she asked
finally. Djerr’s eyes were closed, his head resting against the
ledge behind him. “All that snow, it must have melted into the
ground and now it’s frozen, but it’s still there,” she said to
herself. “It used to be so foggy where I lived, everyone said it
was because we lived by the lake. Sometimes you could even see the
water droplets hanging in the air. I used to be reminded of that
when the sun came out after the rain back in Kain. The mist would
rise in the air, just hanging there above the rocks and the
roofs.”

She lowered her hands to the ground and took
a slow breath outwards, extending energy through the frozen mud.
Invisible tendrils flowed from her fingertips, probing the ground.
It was jagged and hard on the surface, almost painful, but as she
dug deeper, she found it was still soft and malleable. Things lived
under there - she felt the quiet vibrations of ants tunneling,
slowly moving deeper in the soil.

Slowly, carefully, she kept extending her
reach. With each slow breath outwards, she groped slightly further
until she was trembling, unable to stretch farther. With another
slow breath, she began sending out pulses of heat into the soil,
warming it in all directions. It threaded its way upwards,
gradually melting the thin layer of ice. Far removed from her body,
Tarana vaguely felt the ground below her body begin to soften.

Stretching something inside of herself, she
increased the heat and she felt the water in the ground begin to
thread its way upward, slowly rising from the ground. Her reach
began to slip back toward her body and with a small jerk, she sent
a final burst of heat, then snapped back into her own body,
slumping forward. She looked around her and saw mist rising from
the ground in all directions. Putting her hand to the ground, she
found it was warm and soft. With no idea how much time had passed,
she glanced over at Djerr, who was watching her carefully.

“You did this?” he asked. When she nodded
tiredly, he smiled. “You really are amazing, you know that?” She
shrugged, too tired to talk and with a final effort, reached out in
the same way to one of the bushes near them, sending it a sharp
jolt of heat, enough to make it catch fire and keep them warm, the
smoke hidden within the fog. She fell to her side, asleep before
she hit the ground.

Her sleep was dreamless and when she opened
her eyes to find herself in the cave, she had no sense of how long
she had been asleep. With a small sigh, she closed her eyes again
until she felt Rupert poking her side with his foot. Grumbling, she
rolled over and slowly sat up, drawing her knees up to her chest
and resting her chin on top. “I need sleep,” she mumbled, her eyes
still half-closed.

“Nice work back there,” Rupert said briskly.
“Using your surroundings to benefit you. Always a good idea. And I
noticed you are starting to relax a little when you use your magic,
although you’re still drawing out far more energy than is
necessary. Do you have any idea how much fog you caused?” Tarana
shook her head, yawning. “Well, you’ll find out today, when you
start walking. A word of suggestion, use the magnetic field of the
planet to keep your direction, since you will probably be walking
through thick fog all day long.”

Tarana grinned a little and looked up at
him. “Hey, that’s pretty impressive. Could you cause that much fog
when you were my age?”

The deep-set wrinkles in his forehead grew a
little deeper. “Tarana, do you not understand the cycle and flow of
magic through the planet? I thought I made this clear. There is a
certain amount of magic that is cycled through the planet and in
the past, it was doled out to a couple hundred individuals. Some
received more, some received less, but the total amount was always
roughly the same.

“We buried that reserve of magic deep in the
planet when the last of us died, and now that it has re-emerged,
the entirety of that power has been endowed unto you. Now if you
could only learn to control it a little better, you could take
advantage of all that energy, but even as it stands now, the answer
is no - there was no wizard in my lifetime who could cause that
much fog that quickly, including myself.”

Her mouth dropping open, Tarana found
herself waking up a bit more quickly. “Well why in the world did
you wizards decide to give all that power to one person? What if
the person had turned out to be really dumb or mean or
something?”

Rupert shrugged. “It was a chance we had to
take. You’ve heard the story of how we fell. We were too weak when
we were apart, but people were too angry when we were together. The
only solution we saw was if there was only one wizard who could
take control and use his or her power to remain undefeated.”

“Well, I have no intention of taking control
of anyone,” she said firmly and ignored his look. “I’ll learn how
to use my magic, sure. But that’s it. I just want to be left alone
after all this.”

Brushing back his straggly white hair,
Rupert frowned deeply at her. “Well, fog aside, I thought our
lesson today should deal with fire. It’s an extremely valuable
resource, as I’m sure you’ll agree as you try to survive in the
wilderness without a single blanket. There are certain precautions
you can take to keep it from getting out of hand and tricks you can
use to extend its lifespan.” He paused suddenly as he noticed her
expression. She had drawn her knees closer to her chest, arms
wrapped around them and her eyes had grown wide. “Is something the
matter?”

“I don’t want to learn about this,” she said
shortly.

Puzzled, he raised an eyebrow. “You’ve never
refused a lesson before. In fact, you’ve learned faster than I had
even hoped. Why now?”

She gave a tiny shake of her head, and drew
herself even closer, hunching over slightly. “I said I don’t want
to learn about this. Isn’t there something else you could teach me?
I like the bits about the stars and the moon. Couldn’t we learn
more about that?”

“Why, Tarana? Why won’t you learn about
fire? It’s one of the most interesting chemical reactions I’m going
to be teaching you.”

“Because it reminds me of my sister,” she
said quietly, looking at the ground and letting her hair fall over
her face. When Rupert didn’t reply, she glanced up at him and found
him staring at her quizzically.

“I’ve been watching you most of your life,”
he started slowly. “Not constantly, but I checked in periodically,
waiting until you were mature enough for me to begin teaching you.
Things did not go exactly according to plan. You should have
progressed with your magic until you were comfortable using it and
wouldn’t mind me helping you along, but you didn’t reach that point
until relatively recently. I know there have been…” he paused,
trying to find the right wording, “certain events that caused you
to avoid using your magic and I had hoped you were past those,
but,” he paused again, looking bewilderedly down at her, “I can
assure you, I am quite unaware of any sister.”

She stared at him. “My sister. My twin
sister. Aurora? If you were watching me so much, you would have
seen her. She died the night of the fire, along with my mom.”

Taken aback, Rupert crossed his arms and
looked up at the rocky ceiling above them, thinking. Finally, he
looked back down at her and gave a slow sigh. “Well, I don’t know
what else to do, but this. Uncrossing his arms and kneeling down,
he put out a hand and lightly brushed her forehead with the tips of
his fingers.

Tarana suddenly felt lighter, much lighter
in fact. She curled her toes, trying to cling to the ground, afraid
she would drift away. Concentrating on the fact that she felt so
light, she was surprised when she looked up and found herself in
front of a small white house. She recognized it instantly as the
house she grew up in, although it seemed slightly different. It was
smaller than she remembered, the mossy steps leading up to the door
shorter, and its paint was peeling off in places. Glancing to her
side, she saw the tree she used to climb was much shorter, the
limbs closer to the ground. Everything seemed older and younger at
the same time.

Hesitatingly taking a step forward, she
drifted across the ground, never quite rising above it, but never
quite touching it either. She skimmed across the dirt path and up
the stairs to the door. She stopped to knock, but her drifting
momentum carried her forward, through the door. Automatically
squeezing her eyes shut as the solid door loomed in her face, she
braced for the impact, but it never came.

She opened her eyes to find herself inside
the house. The smell of potatoes and onions frying filled the
steamy air and she heard someone clattering pots in the kitchen.
She looked around wonderingly, as nothing had ever looked so
familiar to her – the worn wooden chairs, the faded stain on the
floor partially covered up by a rug, it was all the same.

She drifted down the hallway, gaining speed
as she half-floated, half-stumbled and passed through another door
before she could slow herself. Narrowing her eyes in thought, it
took her several moments to figure out where she was. It was only
when she saw a skinny dark-haired girl lying on the bed that she
realized she was in her old room.

The girl glanced over at her and Tarana
opened her mouth to explain who she was, but then realized she had
no idea where to begin. She closed her mouth again as the girl
looked away unresponsively, and Tarana realized that the girl
couldn't see her.

“Hello?” she tried to say, but no breath
would come from her mouth. It was as if her lungs were empty and
after a second, she realized they were. She tried to take in a
breath, but nothing happened. Panic-stricken for a moment as she
tried unsuccessfully to breathe, she finally forced herself to calm
down. She seemed to have no need for air anymore.

Turning her attention to
the rest of the room, Tarana tried to focus on something else other
than her inability to breathe. It quickly slipped her mind as she
realized there was something very strange about the room, something
missing. It was smaller than she remembered, as the rest of the
house was, but
much
smaller, more so than anything else. With a cold shock, she
noticed what exactly was missing: half the room.

She recognized her side of the room and with
a quick glance at the girl on the bed, she recognized herself, but
Aurora's things – her bed, her toys, and Aurora herself were gone.
All that remained was Aurora's bookshelf, although it was much
emptier than she remembered. In the place that the other half of
the room should be was an empty wall with nothing but a small
mirror affixed.