Now my cozy world had broken like a glass jar dropped onto stone, spilling familiarity and security, never to be gathered back again. The smells were all wrong, the acrid smoke of torches and the reek of too many hard-ridden horses with their unwashed riders.
We wheeled and doubled back, but as we passed a space between buildings, three soldiers wearing the white arrow emerged from the dark like specters, their hands on us before we could move. They pulled us toward the square, where groups of people waited, looking frightened and disheveled, as if they’d been hauled from their beds. I twisted and turned, searching for a way out, but I couldn’t leave Mother. She stood quiet and still beside me.
“Is this the Fireblood girl?” The man was tall, with blade-cut cheekbones and a sandy beard, and he spoke with an air of command. His coat shone with polished buttons.
I scanned the familiar faces of the people from my village. Graham, the miller, and his daughter, Flax. The farmers Tibald, Brecken, and Tom, and their wives, Gert, Lilly, and Melody. They had all come to my mother for treatment when they were sick, but surely they didn’t know what I was. I’d always been so careful, and we’d been nothing but good neighbors.
A boy my age stepped forward. My heart leaped to see that it was Clay, the butcher’s eldest son. At the harvest festival, he had pulled me to the side as the village danced around the fire. His hand had trembled in mine as we shared a kiss in the dark. He’d drawn back after feeling my lips, so hot on his own, but he hadn’t pulled his hand away. After that, we’d stolen looks at each other when I went to his father’s shop.
“She’s the one, Captain,” Clay said, his lips trembling. “She killed my brother.”
My mother gasped and squeezed my hand. My body had gone numb.
A few weeks ago my mother had been summoned by Clay’s father. His infant son wouldn’t nurse. The baby’s skin was cold. Mother tried every salve and curative she knew and finally took me with her to see if my natural heat could warm the child’s skin. But the baby died anyway. I cried for three days afterward.
“You know that’s not true,” I whispered. “I tried to save him.”
“Fireblood!” said Clay’s father. “You brought this on all of us.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “Clay? You’re the one who brought the soldiers here?”
Clay’s face twisted, but he didn’t answer. He just turned away.
As if by an unspoken command, the villagers retreated as the soldiers moved closer. In moments, my mother and I were the only ones left, two shivering women ringed by blazing torches.
“There’s one way to know for sure,” said the captain, holding his torch in front of him with a glimmer of enjoyment in his cold eyes. “Firebloods don’t burn.”
“Get away, Mother!” I pushed her to the ground.
The torches were almost on us, six or seven coming from all sides, the heat searing my face. The fire from one leaped to the fabric of my dress. Flames ate at my clothes and roared in my ears. My skin was blistering hot, but it didn’t burn.
The captain stepped forward, his hand moving to his sword, and Mother threw herself at him. Her nails slashed down the side of his face, drawing a bead of blood. I tried to pull Mother back, but as I came close, the captain’s booted foot crashed into my chest. I fell to the ground, gasping, the fire on my dress hissing into steam against the snow.
As I struggled to my knees, he lifted his sword, almost lazily. Then he slammed the hilt down onto Mother’s head with a sickening crack.
She crumpled to the ground like a broken doll, her hair spread over the snow, wispy and delicate, as if drawn with a piece of charcoal. Her long, lovely neck curved like a wilted flower stem.
I crawled to her side and took her shoulders, called out to her. My hands fluttered to her chest, her neck, searching for her heartbeat, strong and steady, like she was. But she lay still.
The world froze.
No. No. No.
The timid little flame in my chest flared to a river of heat, far beyond my control. I didn’t care. What was the use in hiding it now? I breathed in a gasp that stole the air from the sky, the trees, the world. The wind seemed to twist around me, the eye of the tornado.
I exhaled.
The flames that covered my body expanded, erupting with a roar and pinwheeling forward. A chaos of writhing, panicked men blurred in my vision as soldiers fell to the ground, pushing their faces and hands into the snow.
My mother’s still form lay behind me, her hair and limbs in a tumble. I reached out to gather her to me, but hands seized my shoulders. I lashed out with my fists and searched my mind for that well of flame I’d found in my deepest self.
The heat died as they dropped me into a horse trough, my body breaking through a layer of ice into water that stabbed my skin like needles. Rough wooden walls pressed against my sides. I pushed up, my chest bursting with singeing cold, and was shoved back down. I clutched at the edges of the trough, my nails digging into the wood.
Finally, I was pulled up, gagging out water and sucking in great mouthfuls of icy air.
The captain, his head gilded by a flickering orange light, bent down and grasped a fistful of my streaming hair, shoving his face into mine. His face was red, blisters forming on his cheeks.
“You’ll pay for what you did to me and my men. Your whole village will pay.”
Fire already blazed behind him, storefronts and houses belching out black smoke. Some of the villagers tried to stop the soldiers, whose torches touched wooden walls and piles of firewood and carts, while they hooted and shouted as if this were an evening’s entertainment. Their voices mixed with the wails of those who could only stand by and watch as their livelihoods burned.